On July 22, Naxos of America releases the soundtrack recording to the much-anticipated film based on Evelyn Waugh’s powerful 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited (Chandos 10499). The film, which will be widely-released in North America on August 1, is the first original film score recording 
on Chandos Movies, and features music by film and television composer Adrian Johnston, who has won both BAFTA and Emmy Awards for his scores. Johnston has had an impressive career scoring films that include Becoming Jane, Kinky Boots, The Mayor of Casterbridge and White Teeth, as well as the score to the television film Shackleton (2002), for which he won an Emmy Award. The soundtrack features the acclaimed BBC Philharmonic, conductor by Olivier Award winner Terry Davies, who has a wide range of credits in film, theatre, and television, including Shakespeare in Love, Becoming Jane, House of Mirth, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.Directed by Julian Jarrold, Brideshead Revisited features an impressive cast which includes Academy Award winner Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, Matthew Goode, Hayley Atwell, and Ben Whishaw. With a screenplay by Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies, the story follows the memoirs of Charles Ryder and his involvement with the Flyte family, who own the Brideshead Estate. It relives the hedonistic days of 1920s Oxford University and tells an evocative story of forbidden love and loss of innocence, with particular focus on Charles’s relationship with brother and sister, Sebastian and Julia, and their mother, Lady Marchmain.
Adrian Johnston writes of the Brideshead Revisited recording: “I was thrilled to have an opportunity to work with Chandos – a label whose philosophy I have always liked, and whose CDs of Philip Lane’s fine film score reconstructions I have particularly admired. I know that to release a ‘non-historical’ film score was somewhat of a departure for the label, but I hope that Brideshead Revisited can somehow exist as a Chandos product, and perhaps open up the way for future film music collaborations.”
Born in Cumbria in 1961, Adrian Johnston read English at Edinburgh University but it was always clear to him that he would somehow make a career in music. That career really began with silent films, after a dalliance in the pop world (while still a student) as a drummer with the earlier incarnation of the band that became The Waterboys. He spent most of his twenties travelling around the world, accompanying new prints of silent films at film festivals, generally as a one-man band. From there, working in the theatre was a natural progression, and he wrote scores for plays at the Royal National Theatre and for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was given a break into film by Michael Winterbottom, who in 1996 asked him to write the score for Jude. Subsequently he met Stephen Poliakoff, with whom he has collaborated on ten television plays and films, including the multi-award winning Shooting the Past, and Julian Jarrold, with whom he has worked for over 10 years on feature films like Becoming Jane and Kinky Boots. He won a prime time Emmy Award for his score for Charles Sturridge’s mini-series Shackleton in 2002 and a BAFTA for Poliakoff’s Capturing Mary in 2008.
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Sir Edward Elgar wrote his Crown of India for a 1912 musical event in London celebrating the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary as Emperor and Empress of India. Although such an event is an historical anachronism today, the music Sir Edward was not. The orchestral suite from this work is one of his most performed pieces. This podcast looks at a new recording of both versions – the full version with narration, and the orchestral suite – with the BBC Philharmonic, Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, and singers Clare Shearer and Gerald Finley, all conducted by Sir Andrew Davis.
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