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‘I never thought about Oscars’: Brutalist composer Daniel Blumberg on the happiness and horror of his big win

The defiantly anti-commercial musician had walked away from mainstream success twice by his early 20s. Will his Academy Award convince him to embrace Hollywood, celebrity, the big bucks?

You could see it in his Oscars acceptance speech – shy and shaky-legged, he just about got through his thank-yous, before leaving the stage half-singing a tribute to his friends at Cafe Oto, the avant-garde London venue that has been a second home to him for years. Also, how the Polish film director Krzysztof Kieślowski made him understand the possibilities of cinema; the genius of Scott Walker and the French musician Ghédalia Tazartès; becoming soul brothers with Brady Corbet; why he and his ex-partner (the actor Stacy Martin, who stars in The Brutalist) get on better than ever … It mirrors perfectly the arc of the narrative – about a Hungarian concentration camp survivor and groundbreaking architect (played by Adrien Brody, who won the Oscar for best actor) trying to establish a new life in the US after the war – from the shrieking sax and industrial percussion reflecting the epic landscape and debauched nights out to tender piano pieces telling the love story.

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