Sony Music Masterworks today releases The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (Original Motion Picture Score) by award-winning composer James Newton Howard. Available everywhere now, the album features original score music written by Howard for the new prequel to the massively popular dystopian film franchise. Howard makes his return to the world of Panem after scoring the franchise's original four films, part of the composer's longstanding creative relationship with director Francis Lawrence. Featured throughout the album's 40 tracks is global superstar pianist Yuja Wang, infusing the score with her extraordinary musicality and lyricism. The soundtrack is also set to be released in vinyl format, arriving on colored discs enclosed in a 2-LP gatefold set alongside liner notes and stills from the film. Lionsgate's The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is now in theaters.
The prequel takes place 64 years before the events of the first film. In composing the score for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Howard embraced the opportunity to compose a fully orchestral score with a minimal amount of electronics. "The challenge for composing scores for movies is always about storytelling and connecting with the unique tone of the movie," Howard says of the process. Utilizing baroque instruments like the viola de gamba and cello d'amore was effective in evoking a more rural, folk feel to the score, both a nod to the prequel's earlier time period and also a stylistic extension of the original songs performed throughout by lead Rachel Zegler.
The final piece of the score, however, came together with the help of famed Chinese pianist Yuja Wang, who features across the album's 40 tracks. A longtime fan of the piano prodigy, Howard began writing solos throughout the score tailored to Wang's musicality, namely the lyrical quality of her playing. "Yuja gave us a really interesting expression of the score, which we wouldn't have had before," Howard says of their work together, continuing, "For a lot of these dramatic, very tense moments, we used piano in a more elaborate way than I ever would have before. I think it really became a very important voice in the score and a great storytelling device." In addition to recording alongside the orchestra, Yuja also contributed her talents to three solo piano suites Howard wrote, each of which are based on main themes from The Hunger Games, including a new reworking of one of his most moving cues, "Rue's Farewell." The three suites provide a fitting end to the collection as both an extension of the new score material and as a commemorative touchstone to the larger soundscape of the franchise.