The Film Music of Georges Auric (Includes 'Passport to Pimlico' & 'The Lavender Hill Mob')

"All the scores here (expertly reconstructed by Philip Lane) are from British films, for which Auric wrote some 30; but he also wrote another 100 or so for French, German, Italian and American movies. It was in fact by a French film - René Clair's delightful satire A nous la liberté - that he first won our hearts in 1932; it wasn't until the end of the war that he was taken up by Denham and Ealing. Auric, not one for the 'hit tune' score beloved by commercial exploiters, nevertheless showed in his Moulin Rouge waltz that he too could command the popular style.
On this disc he's heard running the gamut through the grandiose or the dramatic (It alwaysrains on a Sunday, one of his finest pieces), the menacing (the unforgettably scary Dead ofNight) and the atmospheric ('At the Sphinx' in Caesar and Cleopatra) to the swirling gaiety of The Titfield Thunderbolt, the perky Passport toPimlico and the ebullient high spirits of Hue andCry. From the gusto of the playing throughout, it seems clear that the BBC Philharmonic enjoyed making this disc: understandably so." (Gramophone)