On this CD, Neville Marriner conducts music by William Walton from two Shakespeare films, arranged as suites by Christopher Palmer. Laurence Olivier starred in As You Like It (1936) and directed and starred in Hamlet (1948). As You Like It definitely has the sound of a film score; it was only Walton's second, and he seems caught up in the conventions expected of English film composers of the era -- soaring romantic lines with swelling, overripe strings, undergirded with a Holstian plumminess. Walton does manage to include ...
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On this CD, Neville Marriner conducts music by William Walton from two Shakespeare films, arranged as suites by Christopher Palmer. Laurence Olivier starred in As You Like It (1936) and directed and starred in Hamlet (1948). As You Like It definitely has the sound of a film score; it was only Walton's second, and he seems caught up in the conventions expected of English film composers of the era -- soaring romantic lines with swelling, overripe strings, undergirded with a Holstian plumminess. Walton does manage to include moments of more subtlety, particularly in his setting of "Under the Greenwood Tree," sung gracefully by soprano Catherine Bott, and several of the quieter movements have considerable charm. Hamlet: A Shakespeare Scenario includes a part for speaker, performed here by John Gielgud reciting some of the play's more famous lines over Walton's music. Walton had matured appreciably as a film composer, and much of the music for this score could be as easily heard as music from a tone poem or...
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Add this copy of Walton: Hamlet; as You Like It to cart. $21.76, new condition, Sold by newtownvideo rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from huntingdon valley, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by Chandos.
