Introduction
The films telling the story of The Master and Margarita may be criticized many times, often the critics would agree that their soundtracks are good and sometimes even impressive.
The first film trying to bring the story of The Master and Margarita in the movies was made by Aleksandar Petrovic (1929-1994) in 1972. The movie has been criticized on many points, but Petrovic could attrack the famous Italian composer Ennio Morricone (°1928) for composing the soundtrack. His most famous composition of this film is the song The Encounter. It's a gentle, poetic melody in the typical Morricone style.
In 1993, the Russian director Yuri Kara (°1954) asked composer Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) to make the soundtrack for his film Master i Magarita. The film was planned to be the most expensive post-Soviet production ever. For various reasons, however, it took 17 years before it was shown in the cinema theatres. The CD with Schnittke's soundtrack was released in 2005 though. However, when the film was released in 2011, it seemed to be greatly reduced in time and in various scenes Schnittke's music was left out or replaced by other, not necessarily more appropriate, music. Like, for example, Woland's ball, for which Yuri Kara used the Bolero by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937).
One of the most impressive scores is the soundtrack written in 2005 by Igor Kornelyuk (°1962) for the Russian TV series Master i Margarita directed by Vladimir Bortko (°1946). First the composer Andrei Petrov (1930-2006) had been commissioned, but those plans were changed. Of course, we will never now how it would have looked like with the music of Petrov, but the music of Kornelyuk certainly contributed to the success of the TV series. It was used with images of The Master and Margarita by hundreds of amateur filmmakers on websites like YouTube.
In the spring of 2015, the British radio station BBC 3 broadcast the radio play The Master and Margarita, an adaptation by Lucy Catherine. The original soundtrack was made by composer Stephen Warbeck (°1953), best known by the Academy Award which he won for the film Shakespeare In Love, and also for the music he wrote for the TV series Prime Suspects and A Young Doctor's Notebook. The latter series is inspired by Bulgakov's stories and starred Daniel Radcliffe (°1989) and Jon Hamm (°1971).
It is possible that I missed some soundtracks. So if you know about others, please don't hesitate to contact me.