Rachel Portman, Oliver Twist - 53m 28s

Tracks & Durations

1. Streets of London	2:00
2. The Road to the Workhouse	3:03
3. A Kind Old Woman	2:04
4. Oliver Runs Away	2:31
5. The Artful Dodger	1:49
6. Fagin's Loot	2:54
7. The Game	2:14
8. Oliver Learns the Hard Way	5:38
9. Watching Mr. Brownlow's House	2:17
10. The Escape From Fagin	1:13
11. Prelude to a Robbery	1:48
12. The Robbery	5:09
13. Toby and then Wounded Oliver	1:20
14. Nancy's Secret Journey	2:29
15. The Murder	2:27
16. Wanted: Bill Sykes & A Fierce Dog	2:50
17. The Death of Bill Sykes	6:12
18. Newgate Prison	5:20

Note: The information about this album is acquired from the publicly available resources and we are not responsible for their accuracy.

Review

Listening to Rachel Portman's score, you find yourself wondering if she misread the assignment sheet and thought she was working for an adaptation of the Dickens classic made by Masterpiece Theater, not one by troubled, thoughtful cinéaste Roman Polanski. The music here is lovely. Portman, whose other works include Nicholas Nickleby and Emma, is very skilled at evoking 19th-centure ambiance without falling into pure mimicky of that period's classical composers. But "lovely" isn't necessarily what one might expect from Oliver Twist. It's all very quiet. How could something titled "Escape from Fagin" be that subdued?

And yet so it is. "The Murder" reprises similar themes with the same results. The Prague Philharmonic (a popular orchestra who's recorded everything from Dr. Strangelove: Music from the Films of Stanley Kubrick to the heavy strains of black metal band Dimmu Borgir) does its best, but one wishes for more depth throughout. Polanski is never afraid to stare straight into the darkness; Portman should have felt empowered to do the same. --Elisabeth Vincentelli

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