Great Expectations: The Score-Original Soundtrack Music by Patrick Doyle 1998 CD-New $49.99

Description

Great Expectations-The Score Music by Patrick Doyle 1998

Patrick Doyle’s score to Alfonso Cuaron’s contemporary update of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations is a provocative amalgam of styles that results in a continually intriguing record. Working with a variety of different musicians — including guitarist John Williams, pianist Cyrus Chestnut, saxophonist James Carter, whistler Carey Wilson and vocalists Césaria Évora, Miriam Stockley, Kiri Te Kanawa and Tori Amos — Doyle has created a rich tapestry of sounds that draws from classical music, traditional film scores, opera, flamenco, Latin music, pop, new age and jazz, among many others. While some segments don’t work as well as others, the album is an adventurous, unpredictable score that’s welcome in an era of overblown, schmaltzy and underwritten soundtracks.

This modern adaptation of Dickens’ classic coming of age story sees the young and naïve Finn, who falls in love with Estella, a girl raised with the strict intention of breaking men’s hearts. When he is grown up and living in New York, having become a successful painter, Estella reappears in his life and Finn falls deeply in love, knowing all the while that it is a feeling that can never be returned.

Great Expectations is a 1998 contemporary film adaptation of Charles Dickens’s 1861 novel of the same name, co-written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón and starring Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hank Azaria, Robert De Niro, Anne Bancroft and Chris Cooper. It is known for having moved the setting of the original novel from 1812-1827 London to 1990s New York. The film is an abridged modernization of Dickens’s 1861 novel, with the hero’s name having also been changed from Pip to Finn, and the character Miss Havisham has been renamed Nora Dinsmoor. The film received mixed reviews.

Video: Patrick Doyle –  Estella’s theme (Great Expectations) 1988