This CD contains selected themes from five of Chaplins brilliant films. The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), The Circus (1928), City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936). If you love the music from these films then you will love this album. Carl Davis has been very sensitive when rerecording the original scores. The music sounds amazing and he has remained true to Chaplins own styles and tempo's. The thing that will strike you more than anything is how amazing these scores really are in Stereo! They really do sound very good indeed. It also fully demonstrates just how good a composer Chaplin really was, and his talent for marrying music to film. As music it is beautiful from the harshness of "Gold Rush" to the haunting "Modern Times" and not forgetting the swinging "City Lights". Magical stuff! 5 out of 5, 10 out of 10 etc… But if you are planning on listening to this 80 minute album from beginning to end, you'd better make sure you have some Chaplin films close to hand because you WILL want to watch them all again. Nostalgia at its very best.

If you want a good sampling of Copland's orchestral works, then this 2-CD compilation comes highly recommended, with excellent performances of works such as Appalachian Spring, Quiet City, El Salón México and others. (Presto Classical)

Paul McCartney was commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra to compose a work to mark its 150th anniversary and collaborated with composer/conductor Carl Davis on this 90-minute classical piece, which features soloists Kiri Te Kanawa and Jerry Hadley in a vaguely autobiographical story of a Liverpudlian named Shanty…

In 1924 there occurred an extraordinary coincidence: George Gershwin composed his Rhapsody in Blue and F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his third novel The Great Gatsby. Gershwin’s score was bright, tuneful and optimistic. Fitzgerald’s novel was brilliant, funny and sad. Both defined the 1920’s as what Fitzgerald dubbed “The Jazz Age”. I knew and loved both book and music from a very early age. I had an opportunity to express this when in 2019 the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre commissioned a new score for a ballet based on the novel. I wanted this ballet to sound like an expensive Broadway musical of the period: a small group of strings but plenty of saxes, pinging brass and holding it together that jazz beat and the throb of the Blues, but I also had a story to tell and characters to delineate. The novel darts about in time, only gradually revealing Gatsby’s story. In choosing selections for concerts and CD, I chose to mix it up and look for a musical logic. I also wanted to pay tribute to the popular dances of the day: sentimental waltzes, the Argentine tango and Paso Doble, Foxtrots and above all, the Charleston but central to the book is the classic love story of Daisy Fay and Jay Gatsby. What starts as a wartime romance in 1917 ends tragically with their reunion five years later.