COMPOSERS: Georges Auric
LABELS: Auvidis Travelling
WORKS: Orphée; L’aigle à deux têtes; La belle et la bête; Le testament d’Orphée
CATALOGUE NO: K 1506 Q208
Most soundtracks are like amputated limbs – filleted from a film, leaving the human voices and ambient sound behind. Music which seemed moving and evocative in the cinema tends to wither and die when heard out of context; if it was composed in a collaborative spirit, that’s how it should be heard. At last someone has grasped the point.
The CD devoted to the film music of Georges Auric is an even greater delight. For some reason we don’t get anything from his first collaboration with Cocteau – Le sang d’un poète – but key scenes from Le testament d’Orphée and La belle et la bête leap into exuberant life. On the first track Cocteau himself announces his poetic credo and, as Auric’s music mingles with the voices of Jean Marais and Edwige Feuillere, the spirit of his somnambulistic world comes exhilaratingly across.