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The Aviator Decca Classics

After four years in Middle Earth scoring and re-scoring the Lord of the Rings trilogy - and winning Oscars for The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King - Howard Shore emerges with an extraordinarily complex and dense score for Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. The soundtrack (performed by The Flemish Radio Orchestra) combines neo-classical tropes with big-band jazz and Latin rhythms, dynamically juxtaposing exacting fugues and canons with sinuous rumba and bouncing syncopation. The music is at once evocative both of 1930s Hollywood and of Howard Hughes's obsessiveness, and expressive of Shore's signature formal playfulness. From the dramatic Icarus and the haunting Germ Free Zone to the brooding Quarantine, The Aviator is Shore at his best.

www.deccaclassics.com Jocelyn Clarke