Michael Nyman, CBE: Greenaway Revisited (Michael Nyman Records Audio CD)

NYMAN/GREENAWAY REVISITED - The Composer's Cut Series - Volume

Music composed, conducted and produced by Michael Nyman
Performed by the Michael Nyman Band
"The purpose of the Composer's Cut series is to present music from my soundtracks in a state of continuous evolution. As I transferred particular cues from film to concert hall both musical structures changed and performance styles developed, enabling the music, perhaps, to realise its true potential. So these recordings represent the Michael Nyman Band's state-of-performance as of spring 2005." – MN August 2005

Nyman/Greenaway revisited is a collection of the most popular music from the five soundtracks provided by the composer for Peter Greenaway's feature films from 1982 – 1991. Music from The Draughtsman's Contract, A Zed and Two Noughts, Drowning By Numbers, The Cook The Thief His Wife And Her Lover, & Prospero's Books is included.

Greenaway & Nyman had a very different relationship from that of most directors/composers, with Greenaway giving Nyman immense scope for the music. Nyman responded in kind with some of the best film music of the last quarter century. The working methods even varied from film to film. While the score of Zed and Two Noughts was composed without the composer even having seen a single frame of the film, the climactic scene of The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover was quite deliberately choreographed to the pre-existing piece Memorial. The music for these films became widely known & hugely influential on a succeeding generation of composers and directors.

One of Nyman's most recently completed film scores (for The Libertine) returns the composer to a film with a 17th century setting, with director Laurence Dunmore claiming it was the memory of hearing the music to A Zed and Two Noughts many years ago that led him to commissioning Nyman for this film, while Michael Winterbottom (a director who has also worked extensively with Nyman), used music from The Draughtsman's Contract for his newest film A Cock and Bull Story. This collection of music has also become immensely well known to a wide public audience. Among the most frequently performed contemporary music, whether on classical radio stations, or through use in film, TV programming or advertising use, these pieces are as familiar to a mainstream audience as many contemporary pop and rock songs.

Recorded in April 2005 at Abbey Road Studios, this album is the definitive compilation of the music from the Nyman/Greenaway collaboration.