Oscar Winning ‘Parasite’ Music Recorded with Hungarian Contributors

On Sunday, South Korean film ‘Parasite’ made history at the 92nd Academy Awards as the first foreign language film to win the Oscar in the Best Picture category. The film’s music was produced with the contribution of Hungarian musicians: the score was orchestrated by Bálint Sapszon and Norbert Elek, and was also performed by Hungarian musicians from Sapszon’s company in Hungary, Budapest Scoring.

Bong Joon-ho’s South Korean satire won four Oscars, including Best Picture, director, international film, and original screenplay. Although the film’s score wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, it has been praised by many, and now Hungarian public radio Kossuth Radio also talked about the Hungarian contributors to the music, index.hu writes.

Bálint Sapszon, who grew up in a musical family, first collaborated with the South Korean director three years ago, when he contributed to the music for his film ‘Okja,’ which he also orchestrated. The director contacted him a year ago just before Christmas, concerning the music of ‘Parasite,’ and Sapszon’s team only had a few days to put together the music for the movie.

Parasite’s soundtrack features a minimalist, piano-driven original score by Korean film composer, Jung Jaeil, as well as music for example by Handel, and Italian singer Gianni Morandi. According to Kossuth radio, for ‘Parasite,’ Sapszon and his team had to create symphonic music on piano bases and they used instruments, such as a harpsichord, which are no longer typical today in film scores. The film’s music is dominated by piano and baroque music, but there are a lot of parts with sound-effects, to create tension as well as lighter music.

Los Angeles-based composer Bálint Sapszon and co-writer Elek Norbert are also featured on the IMDb website of Bong Joon Ho’s four time Oscar-winning film as contributors in the music department.

featured photo: Parasite Facebook

Source : hungarytoday.hu