Search - Miklos Rozsa :: Moonfleet [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]

Style and panache

Mr. Francois Cuadrat | FRANCE | 02/12/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Miklos Rozsa was born around Budapest in 1907 (he died in Los Angeles in 1995). As a child, he was a prodigy and ended up first violin in an orchestra, but already he felt drawn to composing : he was just ten then, jus like the hero of the film for which he would write this beautiful score. His encounter with Arthur Honegger in Paris would definitely put his musical life toward one direction. First in England and then in Hollywood, he would become the appointed composer for the greatest directors of the time, along with another mainstay of the MGM, Bronislaw Kaper. Miklos Rosza would also compose "classical music", which would also reflect his dramatic and pessimistic - almost dark - style, but never lacking lyricism, style and panache. On that respect, the Moonfleet score reveals his boiling and tormented artistic temper : this natural born musician was nicknamed "Hollywood great Wagnerian gypsy". The musical theme of this film (sadly enough, it was a low budget project, but a great success anyway) sounds like a piece of traditional Scottish music and the orchestration is more than brilliant in the minor tone (ancient minor tone, without a leading-note) ; the horns alternating with the strings is amazing, the changing of scales strung together by the flutes and the piccolos will give you the goose-bumps : this film has a peculiar atmosphere to it and a spellbinding that cannot be ignored, anyway !"