The Oligarch and the Art Dealer

The Oligarch and the Art Dealer is a Danish documentary series - there is a shortened version as well - in collaboration with co-producing countries France and the United States. The series is about a Swiss art dealer and a Russian oligarch caught in a web of secrets and lies in a billion-dollar play of ultimate fraud regarding the world of auctioning classic and contemporary art.

Dutch composer Alexander Reumers, an active composer who mostly works on domestic projects, composed the original score for this international co-production. The score is a combination of atmospheric electronic layers, piano, percussion, beats, and several other sounds, supported by six violins, two alt-violins, two cellos, and a contrabass. In essence, there is a specific art to scoring longer documentary series to have recurring music and a constant moving-forward approach befitting of a project such as The Oligarch and the Art Dealer. It's a very well-balanced score, leveling in between the common fillers, even a series of clichés, but also various touches of elegance and subtlety in the overall musical design.

The progressive pieces of recurring music, using piano in varied techniques, more freely impressionistic playing through plucked and poignant strings with certain class reflecting the overall intent, electronic percussion often presented with the help of strings in a slightly ostentatious, heist-thriller mode, and the minimal music, add greatly the overall uncovering of its widespread fraud. In several moments throughout the series, there is a wonderful drowned sound, consisting of various instruments, carving an immersive but subtle accompaniment to what is divulged.

Other documentary (series) about a similar subject and/or with a lot of people almost constantly talking make very different decisions in the making of the original music, sometimes a very distilled, low-key atmospheric music with a small level of emotion, working very well. The score by Alexander Reumers is positively going in all sorts of directions. In the second episode, there is one short cue about the fraud behind the auction of a Modigliani painting, underscored by a level of frenzied strings and brass, ending on an image of falling glass, coinciding with a person on screen
realizing what has happened, ending in an eruption of brass blaring in a manner suitable for a cartoon. This is the only piece of score that falls out of place in an otherwise excellent score.

The music remains unreleased.


(05-07-2026)