Quartet Records, in collaboration with Studio Canal, presents a remastered reissue of Georges Delerue’s 1973 Academy-Award nominated score for the Mike Nichols classic paranoia thriller THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN, starring George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere and Paul Sorvino, from a Buck Henry screenplay.

Based on a novel by Robert Merle, the film is about Dr Jake Terrell (Scott), who, after training a pair of dolphins for many years, has had a breakthrough. He has taught his dolphins to speak and understand English, although they have a limited vocabulary. When the dolphins are stolen, he discovers they’re to be used in an assassination attempt. Now he is in a race to discover who is the target and where the dolphins are before the attempt is carried out.

Georges Delerue provides an impressive score with a bittersweet main theme (one of the best of his own style); Vivaldi-flavored and lyrical music for the dolphins; and a subdued, tense dramatic music for the conspiracy. The score also contains an energetic, fugue-like pursuit cue (“The Chase”) that puts an action/suspense spin on the Baroque.

The original 35-minute album of THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN was released in 1974 by AVCO. That was reissued twice on CD in the nineties in Japan, where the album was a huge success, and then Percepto Records released the first edition of the complete score in a limited CD edition in 2008. For this new edition, we have included both the original album assembly and the film score, which present different mixes and cues of different lengths.

The album was produced, restored and mastered by Chris Malone from the original album masters and recording session tapes, all in stereo and courtesy of Studio Canal. The package includes a 16-page full-color booklet including an in-depth essay by Jeff Bond about the film and the score.

QUARTET