She was just four years old when her mother Traudi walked out, never to return, in order to train as a guard in Germany’s concentration camps. Helga never knew the truth until, as an adult, she decided to track her mother down in Vienna, to discover not only the horror of the past, but also of Traudi’s unashamedly proud memories of the most notorious camp of all, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Helga wouldn’t return to Vienna until thirty years later, when news arrived: Traudi was dying. Helga returned, for the sake of closure, and hoping her mother had finally repented. Mirroring the film’s haunted and intimate nature, Selway’s score is grounded in strings and piano, plus guitar, electronics, musical saw, glockenspiel and bowed vibraphone, and the occasional use of bass and drums, creating a paradoxical sense of beauty and unease. The album will be released physically on October 27 via Bella Union. In 2014, Selway had written a score for the Rambert Dance Company, so he had form. Philip said: “I’d also held the ambition to write a full film score too.” Selway already knew the film’s director/co-producer/writer Polly Steele and co-producer Lizzie Pickering when they sent him the screenplay in 2015. He recalled: “I read it, and then Helga’s memoir, and I was completely hooked.” “The script had so much depth, and tackled very powerful subjects. Polly and Lizzy wanted their film to stay true to Helga’s past, and to allow me the creative freedom to realise the emotional complexity of her story.” In the film, Helga has kept the truth from her own daughter and grand-daughter, and subsequently kept her own emotions tightly bound in silence, so Selway’s words revolve around the core theme of abandonment and the ties that bind. Philip added: “You can apply the words of Walk to any of the female characters.” “The four women in the script were the starting point, so I wrote for a string quartet, especially since their sound is so warm. The interplay between the instruments was a nice metaphor for the different generations.” “It’s an otherworldly sound, and a very jagged instrument, which is appropriate for the film’s drama - and the music mushroomed from there. Michael Woods’ stunning cinematography, which captured all the beautiful light in Vienna, also fed into the instrumentation and arrangements. And each actress as she was cast also shaped my approach. Such as Juliet Stevenson, who plays Helga - I immediately thought of Juliet in Truly Madly Deeply, and Barrington Pheloung’s music for the film, which also led me down the string-quartet route. I feel the soundtrack is in tune with the emotional range and overall aesthetic of the film.” To listen to Let Me Go, click here. For further information about the film, click here.