Cold Spring Reassembles the Soundtracks Behind Soviet Cinema’s Strangest Decade

Cold Spring will release Tarkovsky, a five-disc box set gathering the remastered scores to all five films Andrei Tarkovsky made in the Soviet Union, on 4 September 2026.

Title: Tarkovsky
Artist: Various Artists
Genres: Avant-garde, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music
Label: Cold Spring
Description: Cold Spring reissues all five Tarkovsky soundtracks in a 5xCD box, scored by Ovchinnikov and Artemyev, out 4th September 2026.

Featured image: A scene from the film Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979

The two earliest films, Ivan’s Childhood (1962) and Andrei Roublev (1966), carry scores by Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov. The three that followed, Solaris (1972), Mirror (1975) and Stalker (1979), were scored by Eduard Artemyev. Each of the five CDs sits in its own printed card sleeve inside a matt-laminate box, alongside an artcard reproducing the original Russian or Japanese cinema poster used to advertise the film on release.

Andrei Tarkovsky was born on 4 April 1932 in the village of Zavrazhye, in what was then the Ivanovo Industrial Oblast. He directed films known for their slow pacing, dreamlike imagery and preoccupation with memory, and is frequently ranked among the most significant directors in the history of cinema. Repeated friction with Soviet film authorities led him to leave the country, where he completed Nostalgia (1983) and The Sacrifice (1986) abroad. He died of cancer on 29 December 1986, at 54; the illness has been linked to the toxic filming locations used seven years earlier on Stalker.

Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov was born on 29 May 1936 in Voronezh and died on 4 February 2019 in Moscow. He began composing at nine and entered the Moscow Conservatory at fifteen, later studying under Tikhon Khrennikov. Alongside symphonies, symphonic poems and chamber works, he became known internationally for his film scores, above all his music for Sergei Bondarchuk’s four-part War and Peace (1966-67), composed either side of his two collaborations with Tarkovsky.

Eduard Artemyev was born on 30 November 1937 in Novosibirsk and died on 29 December 2022. He studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory under Yuri Shaporin, graduating in 1960, and turned to electronic music soon after, writing his first piece in 1967 on the ANS synthesizer built by fellow Soviet engineer Evgeny Murzin. Solaris was his first film score; he went on to work on some sixty films, including several directed by Nikita Mikhalkov and Andrei Konchalovsky.

CD1 carries Ovchinnikov’s score for Ivan’s Childhood, built around the contrast between the war on the Eastern Front and the boy’s dream sequences. CD2 holds his music for Andrei Roublev, tied closely to the film’s religious and historical subject matter and marked by heavy choral writing.

CD3 presents Artemyev’s Solaris score, an early work of electronic composition combining futuristic reworkings of J. S. Bach, including the chorale prelude BWV 639 performed by Leonid Rouzman, with synthesizer drones and environmental sound generated on the ANS. CD4 contains the Mirror score, described as dense and slow, mixing Baroque-inflected mood pieces with passages of pastoral melody. CD5 closes the set with Stalker, for which Artemyev drew on Indian classical music, layering synth tones with flute, harpsichord, tar and choir.

The box includes a second, previously unreleased or alternate piece from the Solaris score, listed as “Solaris Part 2.”

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