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•	1996 Album

•	1996 Album

What the composer provided for The English Patient was the right score for the right film at the right time. In the film, it fits well with the fatalistic and brooding nature of the plot, resulting in catapulted sales of the album over the long-term. For many film score enthusiasts, however, this score completely fails to function outside of the film's ambient personality, and in many regards, it's one of those rare cases where the film completely carries the score. Between the source music during the dance scenes and the piano performances by Binoche's character as integral to the plot, it's easy to imagine why the music from The English Patient was memorable enough to warrant the awards consideration for most voters. But this success was only fractionally due to Yared's contribution. The score is extraordinarily restrained, which is why it doesn't function dramatically for most score collectors on album. He establishes two themes and develops them very sparsely throughout the lightly orchestral work accented by notable piano and oboe solos. Each features a power inherent in its structure, but Yared is sure to tail off each of their performances due to the unrealized love in the story. As such, both themes promise much in dramatic stature but deliver surprisingly little. The overarching theme of despair exists too infrequently to really define the score. Introduced on solo woodwind midway through the opening "The English Patient," the theme's only other major performance for the full orchestral ensemble waits until "As Far as Florence" at the end. The second theme is the more yearning representation of a love affair, structured with the same broad strokes as a John Barry effort, and you can first hear this idea later in "The English Patient." That opening cue, serving as a suite of all the major ideas, opens with the solo Hungarian vocals of Márta Sebestyén, which may be too grating for most Western ears, and concludes with a brief statement of the despair and loneliness motif, heard on what seems to be a harpsichord and featuring a droning bass note of impending doom. Several other motifs are teased out during the score, but Yared never states them with enough deliberate clarity to make them effective tools of affiliation. The love theme is typically considered the easiest identifier of Yared's work. It receives its first full realization in "Swoon, I'll Catch You" and enjoys a tender touch on piano in "Read Me to Sleep." Lengthy performances for this theme on strings later grace "The Cave of Swimmers" and "As Far as Florence."

But even in its occasional swells of passion, Yared's score for The English Patient fails to muster much convincing energy. With a film depicting a frustrating tale of lost passion and doomed fate, the score follows in those exact footsteps. Never building to its full potential in emotion, each cue typically fades away to meanderings barely audible. Compared to the mesmerizing material that Yared eventually produced for dramas like Message in a Bottle and beyond, he wastes the power and elegance of the players from The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in The English Patient. The presence of the group seems to be based more on reputation for adept classical performances rather than the talent necessary to bring Yared's composition to life. The recording fails to exhibit any of the vibrance that the ensemble is capable of evoking; if anything, the score could have been performed with equal effectiveness by a studio group. Despite its noble and romantic intentions, the entire effort fails to really capture the essence of any of the characters, and yet, in a very fitting way, it very well accompanies the desolate and lonely sands of the desert. Thus, you have to choose your poison. On album, the marginally interesting solos assist in breaking up the monotony; the vocals of Márta Sebestyén, the Hungarian folk artist, add a very brief sense of exotic setting, and John Constable's piano solos further develop the solitary emotions of the film. The occasional sprinkling of period songs causes distress because of their eclectic nature, resulting in an even more disjointed listening experience. Fans of arthouse films will find merit in the album as a souvenir from the film, though most listeners closer to the score collecting world will find it uninteresting, uninvolving, and underdeveloped. Those listeners, along with Yared enthusiasts, will appreciate the composer's digital release of demo and alternate takes from this score, among several of his others, in 2024. These renditions are sparse and often synthetic, showing deconstructed versions of the themes in development. The 76-minute demo product is a laborious and redundant experience, but the opening track, "Very First Demo for Anthony - Piano (Demo)," is absolutely stunning in its wet mix of the piano with synthetic orchestral backing. It's a lovely performance of the main theme not to be missed, but the rest of the album never comes close to achieving that level of engagement. Ultimately, for a film about sorrow, alienation, and fate, the score is a great match. But who would want to listen to The English Patient repeatedly on album when there are so many more complex and melodramatic musical tragedies available for that mood?  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Gabriel Yared reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.11 (in 10 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.17 (in 19,896 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.