The soundtrack to Wes Anderson's film "Moonrise Kingdom" has topped two charts - classical albums and traditional classical albums - six weeks after its release, according to label ABKCO.
Indie auteur Anderson and his longtime music supervisor Randall Poster significantly featured music by 20th century composer Benjamin Britten in their 2012 film. Various excerpts from his opera "Noye's Fludde" ("Noah's Flood") flows at the heart of the story.
"Wes and I were delighted to hear we hit No. 1 on Billboard's Classical chart," Poster said in a recent interview with THR Music. "Benjamin Britten and Leonard Bernstein must be smiling down upon us!"
Other Britten tracks from Moonrise Kingdom include his orchestra work "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" (Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell) conducted by Leonard Bernstein; children's choir song collection "Friday Afternoons" ("Cuckoo," "Old Abram Brown"); string orchestra work "Simple Symphony" ("Playful Pizzicato"); and opera "A Midsummer Night's Dream" ("On the ground, sleep sound").
Moonrise Kingdom, set on a small New England island in 1965, follows the journey of two 12-year-olds who fall in love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness.
"[Britten's music] had a huge effect on the whole movie, I think," said Anderson during the press conference at the Cannes Film Festival. "The movie's sort of set to it."
"The play of Noye's Fludde that is performed in it - my older brother and I were actually in a production of that when I was ten or eleven, and that music is something I've always remembered, and made a very strong impression on me. It is the color of the movie in a way," Anderson added.
This comedy-drama film, which brought a surprising success to Anderson and Poster, was their sixth collaboration since they began working together in 1996.
According to Poster, Anderson wanted to incorporate Britten's work into his film even before he started writing the script for this film.
Watch the film's trailer and a track from the soundtrack below.
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