Centurion: The Dancing Stallion is a 2023 film about a girl who rides horses in competition to escape the troubles of her life, only to face that joy being taken away as well. While it didn’t receive much attention at the time of its release, that doesn’t stop us from enjoying its music which has been released by MovieScore Media three years later. It’s by Arturo Cardelús and is absolutely charming – warm, melodic and emotional, just what you might hope for from this kind of traditional family drama film.
The whole thing is anchored around a very pretty main theme, introduced in the opening “The Centre of Our Lives” initially on piano before the orchestra swells. There’s a mix of emotions explored by the composer through many variants on the theme as the score progresses: sometimes a sense of joy and freedom, occasional playfulness and certainly a youthful innocence, but at others an inescapable sadness. There’s a lot of very warm-hearted orchestral music on display but at times Cardelús makes things more intimate – the guitar of “Danny”, the emotional directness of the piano in “Bad News” and “Pain”. There’s a lovely fluidity to the music, the only real drawback being the demands of the film resulting in a few of the cues being very short. In some ways it reminds me of those scores for emotionally-wrought dramas that composers like John Debney could write so freely thirty years or so back but which are much less common today. It’s a lovely piece of work.
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