This new release, the fourth volume of the Alwyn film music series, has been long anticipated. This series began seventeen years ago with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Richard Hickox, and continued with Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic, who released volumes 2 and 3 in 2001 and 2005. Rumon Gamba also got involved in other series, exploring the music of d’Indy, Rozsa, and British composers of the twentieth century, as in two volumes of Overtures from the British Isles. This latest album brings new recordings of music from the prolific decades of the 40s and 50s, during which Alwyn scored a number of famous films. These scores show to perfection Alwyn’s supreme skill in providing music totally attuned to the subject matter, which ranges from the dramatic to the exotic, from comedy to the factual. Much of the music recorded here had to be reconstructed by Philip Lane from the soundtracks, as written scores had not survived.
