Shakespeare at the Movies

構成数 : 2枚
合計収録時間 : 02:21:01
SHAKESPEARE AT THE MOVIES combines newly recorded excerpts of original scores composed for films based on the plays of William Shakespeare with selected readings from the plays by actors Jenny Agutter, Ioan Gruffud, Derek Jacobi and Ben Kingsley. The original composers include William Walton, Dimitri Shostakovich, Miklos Roza, Nino Rota, Patrick Doyle, Shaun Davey, John Scott and Michael J. Lewis. Music personnel includes: Paul Bateman, Kenneth Alwyn, Nic Raine (conductor); The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra; Crouch End Festival Chorus. Recorded at Smecky Studios, Prague, Czechoslovakia, Whitfield Street Studios and Angel Studios, London, England. Includes liner notes by David Wishart. Personnel: Derek Jacobi, Jenny Agutter, Ben Kingsley (vocals); Shaun Davey, Paul Bateman (piano). Recording information: Angel Studios, Islington, London, England; Smecky Studios, Prague, Czech Republic; Whitfield Street Studios, London, England. Editor: Gareth Williams. Photographer: Ben Jennings. Arrangers: William Walton ; James Shearman; Michael J. Lewis; Fiachra Trench; Daniel Robbins ; Lawrence Ashmore; Dmitry Shostakovich; John Scott ; Mike Townend; Shaun Davey; Paul Bateman ; Muir Mathieson; Nic Raine; Malcolm Sargent ; Stephen Warbeck. Shakespeare's plays have proven to be a perennial source for movie makers, and the bard himself has even been the subject of the Academy Award-winning Shakespeare in Love, so it makes sense for Silva Screen Records, in its ongoing series of re-recordings of film music by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and the Crouch End Festival Chorus, to hit upon the idea of an album consisting of excerpts from the scores of various Shakespeare films. Beginning and ending with Shaun Davey's music for the 1998 production of Twelfth Night, the double-CD presents what amounts to a mini-history of film scores, interspersed with famous Shakespearean monologues by noted Shakespearean actors, none of them (except for the album-closing singing of "The wind and the rain" by Ben Kingsley) actually taken from film soundtracks. Although Kenneth Branagh's versions of some of Shakespeare's great plays from the 1980s and after make an interesting contrast with Laurence Olivier's from the 1940s and after, the makers of this album probably were wise to put a lot of space between William Walton's music for Olivier's Henry V and Patrick Doyle's music for Branagh's version. In keeping with the two directors' very different interpretations, Walton echoes the heroic, World War II-era Henry V of Olivier, while Doyle supports the far more problematic post-Falklands War Henry V of Branagh. Elsewhere, it is interesting how Shakespeare provides a forum for such various composers as Dimitri Shostakovich (a 1964 Hamlet produced in the U.S.S.R.), Miklos Rozsa (a 1953 Julius Caesar from Hollywood), and Nino Rota (both a 1967 The Taming of the Shrew and the massively popular 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet). The differences in the music often demonstrate that, though the texts may be the same, the filmmakers often have taken wildly different approaches to Shakespeare's works. ~ William Ruhlmann