Settling the Score

“Jane [Campion] locked me in a hotel room with a piano and said she wouldn’t let me out until I’d finished,” British composer Michael Nyman, explains to the Guardian about his task to complete the score for the Oscar-winning 1993 film The Piano, directed by Campion. “She said she thought I was the one who could present a visual emotional world with the smallest number of notes in the shortest space. Then there was a slight pause and she said: ‘I don’t want any of that [Peter] Greenaway shit.’ The Piano was so dominant that my career as a soundtrack composer now falls into two halves: pre-Piano and post-Piano.” At the 66th Academy Awards, The Piano won three awards: Best Actress for Holly Hunter, Best Supporting Actress for New Zealander Anna Paquin, and Best Original Screenplay.