Author: moislena Email: moislena[at]mail.ru [25/Oct/2006]

The Queen CD confirms that the French-born composer Alexandre Desplat has his own unique style. His rise started with “Girl with a pearl earring” and continued in “Syriana”, so he is a well known person in Hollywood now. Like in those movies Alexandre does not dictates the mood or imposes a viewpoint. Desplat tends to follow the less-showy European film-scoring model, i.e. he prefers subtlety to bloated orchestrations and tends to refrain from associating characters to musical themes.

To my mind, director Stephen Frears, who created a movie about relationship between Queen Elizabeth and Tony Blair in the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death, fortunately called on Alexandre Desplat as a composer,so the movie’s music did not turn into a tragic set of tunes.

Although his work here is not his best here, it does not disappoint either. Despite quite sad titles “Mourning”, ”River of sorrow” the music is quite light and exquisite, with dark humor sometimes, like the waltz, named “Elizabeth & Tony”, accompanied by the orchestra, consisting of tender violins with occasional solo of the harp. The harp is really strong and powerful in ”People’s Princess I”, in "The Queen Drives." sounding reminds of old Hitchcock movies

The CD concludes with Verdi’s "Libera Me," in the version performed at Diana’s funeral.