London Sessions

In 1989, Robert Townson, the head of Varese Sarabande Records, invited Georges Delerue to record, in the legendary Abbey Road studios, most of his American film compositions, nearly all of which remained unrecorded.

This was one of the most ambitious projects the label had ever undertaken, so much so that Delerue agreed to finance half of it, in order to have complete freedom in selecting and arranging his compositions.

Working through his vast musical maze of themes, the composer at times found it more harmonious for the purposes of a recording to arrange musical themes of a given film into a musical suite.

The first CD opens up with the music of Platoon (1986) and launches us immediately into Delerue's musical universe, lyricism borne by rich and full chords. These same cords can, however, bear the melancholy tones of the blues that also run through the first CD of the collection.

The second CD opens with Steel Magnolias (1989) and a score built upon a dialogue between a solo instrument and the orchestre, but dynamically emphasized in a musical suite. In the midst of mostly American themes, there appears nevertheless the surprise of a Homage to Truffaut, a testament to the friendship between the director and the composer and a recognition by Varese Sarabande of one of the world's most admired directors.
This second CD ends with the violent and the sad, tender strains in the score of Salvador (1986), a powerful musical transposition of the pain and suffering in that film.

And the third CD of the collection reveals a fascinating symphonic suite of the music that went unused in the film Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), one of Delerue's favorite scores and which demonstrates the symbiosis between his two essential talents as both a composer for cinema and a composer for the concert hall.

These London Sessions, with their rich and impeccably recorded sounds, offer an eclectic mix of George Delerue's musical talents. They also show how the style and the musical personality of a composer show through all forms of creation.