Some film scores disappear into the background once the credits roll. Others become part of the story themselves. For The Violinist, music has always been central to the telling of its story, and now audiences can experience that music on its own. Milan Records has released The Violinist (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), a 29-track album featuring music by Golden Horse Award-winning Singaporean composer Ricky Ho and Spanish composer Isabel Latorre.

Available now on Spotify, Apple Music and the iTunes Store, the soundtrack extends the world of the Singapore-led animated feature beyond the cinema, bringing together intimate violin passages, sweeping orchestral arrangements and recurring themes that follow its characters through friendship, memory, loss and resilience.

Directed and co-written by Singaporean filmmaker Ervin Han, The Violinist spans Singapore and Malaya across the early 20th century and the Japanese Occupation. At its centre are two childhood friends bound by music, whose lives are reshaped by war, displacement and time.

The film became the first Singapore animated feature to compete at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where it went on to win both the prestigious Cristal for a Feature Film and the SACEM Award for Best Original Soundtrack.

Those wins placed the film’s music firmly at the centre of its international recognition, something that feels particularly significant for a story in which music becomes a language shared across generations and circumstances.

“Music has always been at the heart of The Violinist, connecting our characters across time and carrying many of the film’s emotions,” says Han. “It has been especially meaningful to see audiences connect so strongly with the score, particularly ‘Sunset Sonata’.”

The film is produced by Singapore-based Robot Playground Media and co-produced with Spain’s TV ON Producciones and Italy’s Altri Occhi, with worldwide sales handled by France tv distribution. Its international production reflects the same cross-border ambition that has shaped the film’s journey, bringing together creative and production teams across Singapore, Spain, Italy and beyond.

The film’s signature track is “Sunset Sonata”, a recurring theme that appears in different forms throughout the film. The melody returns in tracks including “Cavalleria Rusticana: Intermezzo – Sunset Sonata”, “Sunset Concerto” and “Sunset Sonata (Reprise)”, becoming a musical anchor for the characters and their memories of home.

For Ho, who was born in Hong Kong but raised and based in Singapore, the score offered a way to connect the film’s historical setting with its emotional story. “For me, the music of The Violinist is about memory, loss and the bonds that stay with us over time,” he says. “It has been deeply meaningful to hear how the score has moved audiences, and I hope the soundtrack allows those emotions to live on beyond the film.”

Working alongside Latorre, Ho created a musical language that moves between intimate violin writing and larger orchestral textures. The score has to carry both the sweep of history and the quieter emotions of two people whose lives are repeatedly altered by events beyond their control.

Latorre describes the resulting album as “very complete and diverse”, moving between beautiful melodies and darker textures to reflect “a moving human story that shines and endures while everything collapses.”

The violin itself is central to the film’s identity. Singapore violinist Joy Yong provides the playing that gives protagonist Fei a musical voice, making her performance an important emotional thread throughout the story.

“Being part of The Violinist has been incredibly special, as I had the opportunity to help bring Fei’s musical voice to life through the violin,” Yong says. “It was meaningful to contribute to a film so deeply rooted in Singapore’s history, and I’m honoured to have played a part in its journey.”

That relationship between character and instrument is reflected throughout the soundtrack. Tracks such as “Fei and Kai”, “A Life Beyond Grief” and “Strings of a Distant Heart” sit alongside pieces that evoke the wider historical circumstances surrounding the characters.

There are darker wartime passages too, including “Fall of Singapore” and “Syonan Kokaido Orchestra”, giving the album a sense of historical movement rather than functioning simply as a collection of standalone themes. The music moves with the story, from childhood and friendship to war, separation, loss and the possibility of renewal.

That emotional scope is part of what makes The Violinist notable as a Singapore-led animated feature. Its story is deeply rooted in the region, but its production was international from the outset. Robot Playground Media, founded in Singapore in 2013 by Han and Bernard Toh, has built its reputation on complex cross-border animation projects, working with partners across Asia and Europe.

For Han, The Violinist represents the culmination of more than a decade of development and his feature directorial debut. The result is an animated film that uses the scale and visual possibilities of the medium to revisit a particularly difficult period of Singapore and Southeast Asian history through something much more intimate: the relationship between people, and the music that remains with them.

The soundtrack now offers another way into that story. With 29 tracks spanning the film’s historical and emotional journey, it allows listeners to revisit its world without the images, and perhaps notice how much of the story was being carried by the music all along.

As The Violinist continues its theatrical run in Singapore following its 17 September opening, its score has already begun a life of its own. And for a film about memory, that feels especially correct.

Listen to The Violinist soundtrack on platforms like Spotify now. The Violinist film opens at Golden Village cinemas across Singapore from Thursday, 17 September 2026 in both English and Mandarin.