Description:
Between Vertical Features Remake (1976) and Prospero's Books director Peter Greenaway and composer Michael Nyman made 15 films together. Their's was one of the most artistically successful and strikingly original composer/director teams in film history, first finding broad acclaim with The Draughtsman's Contract before shocking audiences with the The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. This final collaboration radically adapted Shakespeare's valedictory play into a challenging contemporary work of great invention and beauty. The Michael Nyman Band performs the score, with small-scale string forces augmented by a range of wi
Between Vertical Features Remake (1976) and Prospero's Books director Peter Greenaway and composer Michael Nyman made 15 films together. Their's was one of the most artistically successful and strikingly original composer/director teams in film history, first finding broad acclaim with The Draughtsman's Contract before shocking audiences with the The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. This final collaboration radically adapted Shakespeare's valedictory play into a challenging contemporary work of great invention and beauty. The Michael Nyman Band performs the score, with small-scale string forces augmented by a range of wind instruments. It is less melodic than restlessly rhythmic, perpetually propulsive motifs driving the drama onwards in complex, unsettling patterns. Five tracks represent Ariel's songs, setting Shakespeare's text to Sarah Leonard's resolutely twentieth-century boy soprano, with "Where the Bee Sucks" particularly outstanding. However, the centrepiece must be the final 12-minute "The Masque+" a musical set-piece performed (on screen as part of the betrothal of Miranda and Ferdinand) by the contrasting singers Marie Angel, Ute Lemper and Deborah Conway. This is an exceptional work in its own right, and a fitting climax to a film, and album, which stands as powerful testament to the remarkable Nyman/Greenaway collaborations. --Gary S. Dalkin
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Manufacturer: Polygram Records
Release date: 12 November 1991
Number of discs: 1
EAN: 0028942522428 UPC: 028942522428
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