Ballet from ‘The Red Shoes’
Prelude and March from ‘The Battle of the River Plate’
Suites from ‘Kew Gardens’
‘Black Narcissus’
‘Adventure On!’
‘Gone to Earth’

Brian Easdale was a prolific composer whose extensive output covered most genres, from orchestral pieces, concertos, and choral works, including a mass for the new Coventry Cathedral, to chamber compositions. This disc is devoted to the film music of Brian Easdale and includes his music for The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, and The Battle of the River Plate. Having studied at the Royal College of Music, Easdale started out as a jobbing musician, preparing arrangements most notably of Britten’s On the Frontier for a production at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge. During the war he worked on documentaries in Ceylon and India, returning to Britain in 1946. Easdale was then invited to write an exotic dance for Jean Simmons to perform in Black Narcissus and ended up writing the whole score. The film is a veritable masterpiece and the music highly dramatic. This assignment led to The Red Shoes in 1948, which won an Academy Award for best Original Score. The Red Shoes is today considered one of the most iconoclastic films in the Pantheon of British Cinema. Rumon Gamba conducts the BBC National Chorus and Orchestra of Wales.