a m e r i c a n r o o t s m u s i c • t r a d i t i o n a l c o u n t r y • b l u e s • f o l k • a m e r i c a n a m u s i c • a m e r i c a n r o o t s
![The Cider House Rules [soundtrack] • Rachel Portman](../assets/images3/banner-brown.jpg)
m u s i c • t r a d i t i o n a l c o u n t r y • b l u e s • f o l k • a m e r i c a n a m u s i c • a m e r i c a n r o o t s m u s i c • t r a d i t i o n
![The Cider House Rules [soundtrack] • Rachel Portman](images/cider_house_rules.jpg) |
The Cider House Rules [soundtrack] ©1999 Sony Classic Music by Rachel Portman Orchestration: Rachel Portman, Jeff Atmajian |
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Track Listing Soundtrack Express Rachel Portman has penned another
delightful and intimate score for The Cider House Rules
which makes for a low key but enjoyable affort. The main theme
introduced in the Main Titles focuses on strings, woodwind and
piano, passing the melody around the orchestra. It perfectly
captures the gentile New England setting and provides for a
strong start to a very good album and recurs on occasion
throughout in different orchestral guises. Given the type of heart warming
drama the film appears to be, the music is naturally quite
sentimental, but never cloyingly so. There are enough more
serious episodes such as the Young Girl's Burial, which has hints
of Thomas Newman harmony creeping in from time to time, to give a
greater dramatic weight to the music. There are also several more
sprightly passages which serve to break up the generally relaxed
atmosphere and give a nice change of pace from time to time.
Portman's pleasing mixture of piano, strings and clarinet gives
the music a typical lightness of touch in cues such as Homer's
Lessons and Homer Asks Wally for a Ride, that is often missing
from scores these days. It is always difficult to know
what to say about scores like this. It is not outstandingly
different or taxing, but is just thoroughly well wrought music
that makes for an uncomplicated and pleasant forty minutes. There
is enough variety in pace although it all has the same
kind of feel and works perfectly well as music apart from the
film (which I've not seen). It commendably avoids becoming
redundant through overuse of the main theme, but there are few
tracks which stand out above the others as they are all of
equally high quality. To my mind, it doesn't feature
many of Portman's typical stylistic touches; for example the main
theme is not so prominently clarinet led as usual and some of the
incidental music could be low key Williams, Delerue or even
someone like Thomas Newman. Of course none of this detracts from
the album as a listening experience and as such I can only
recommend it as delightful in every respect. Not one of Portman's
most idiosyncratic scores, but certainly one that is sincere and
enjoyable. Rachel Portman Filmography Related links: |
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"Since migrating from Cambridge,
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