Composer: Alexandre Desplat
Performer: Myriam Lafargue, Florentino Calvo
Orchestra: Orchestre National de France
Conductor: Emmanuel Pahud
Audio CD
Number of Discs: 1
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Warner
Release: 2020
Size: 970 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
The Shape of Water
01. The shape of water
02. Watching Ruth
03. Elisa’s theme
Pelléas et Mélisande
04. Comme un oiseau pourchassé
05. Ils regardent la lumière
06. Rosée de plomb, inexorables ténèbres
07. Lust, Caution
08. Girl with a Pearl Earring
09. Birth
10. Airlines
11. The Grand Budapest Hotel
Alexandre Desplat is the composer of numerous film scores both in his native France and in Hollywood, where his score for Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs is arguably the most charming. Yet he’s not a household name like other film composers of his caliber. Airlines is perhaps an attempt to raise his profile with an album devoted to his music, and it may well succeed in this respect. The album includes extracts from Desplat’s film scores, arranged to offer a prominent solo flute part; these include the well-known music for The Shape of Water as well as one selection from The Grand Budapest Hotel (the whimsical quality of Desplat’s orchestration seems to fit Anderson’s aesthetic perfectly). There are also lesser-known Desplat film items in a variety of moods and original concert works, including a three-movement Pelléas et Mélisande, in much the same vein as his film music. The title track, Airlines, is not the soaring orchestral work that might be imagined but an engaging and virtuosic solo flute work for Emmanuel Pahud. Desplat himself conducts the Orchestre National de France and achieves an impressively homogeneous sound. Those who have enjoyed Desplat’s film scores will likely already be customers for this release. The thing is that it may attract those who are less aware of his talents.