Michael Nyman — The Cook,The Thief ,His Wife & Her Lover OST
This is part of a series of reissues of soundtracks to celebrate this respected composers 60th birthday.
From the first track Memorial, you are greeted by Nyman’s instantly recognisable style. Repetitive and forceful with melancholy majestics. The track is built with wonderful sounding string melody that it added to by brash trumpets.
The music has such wonderful grace to it. Take the track Book Depository With it’s superb cello melody joined by lush string swells, which is both beautiful and tipped with a great sad longing. Or the wonderful use of Choir on Misere , toped with a haunting boy soprano voice, which has a wonderful morose cathedral like air to it
Nyman worked on twenty Greenaway films and to me these soundtracks where the height of his work. And this one is on of the best, it Complements perfectly Greenaway‘s provocative and challenging film . But also works as enjoyable stand along piece of modern classical/ soundtrack work.
The digipak is elegantly done with a great picture of the actor Michael Gambon getting his just deserts in the fold out .And an informative booklet where Nyman discusses the soundtrack along with his other Greenaway soundtracks.