Just in: Ennio Morricone lands record deal
mainThe venerable film composer signed today with Decca.
Ennio with Decca boss Becky Allen
press release:
June 3, 2016 (London/New York, NY) – World-renowned Italian composer Ennio Morricone has signed a major new record deal with Decca Records, celebrating his professional 60-year career and 600 compositions. His new album Morricone 60 will be released on October 7 just ahead of his 88th birthday, and marks the start of a unique partnership between Decca and the Morricone family.
Morricone 60 is the first album of Ennio Morricone’s greatest hits conducted, recorded and curated by Morricone himself – and aims to create a legacy for his fans to enjoy. It sees the celebrated Maestro performing some of his greatest film music from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to his recent Academy Award-winning score for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (released earlier this year on Decca internationally and Verve in the U.S.). The album marks Ennio Morricone’s 60th anniversary as a composer and conductor and features brand new recordings with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, with whom he has collaborated on major international movie scores.
Upon signing the recording contract with Decca, Ennio Morricone commented: “After the success of The Hateful Eight score, I’m delighted to be returning to Decca with my own record deal – an extraordinary moment in my 60th professional anniversary year. It’s been a wonderful experience to be able to conduct my scores and to record these with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. The quality of their performance of my work is truly outstanding.”
Rebecca Allen, Managing Director of Decca Records, said: “It is a great honor to be signing Ennio Morricone, whose iconic scores have inspired artists, film-makers and music-lovers around the world for generations. We have waited over 60 years to sign this legendary artist and are thrilled to welcome him to Decca Records – also 87 years strong!”
“Better late than never” so aptly applies here. Morricone is truly one of filmdon’s greatest composers. His poignantly beautiful melodies (“Once Upon A Time in America”, “Once Upon a Time in the West”, “The Mission,” et al,), along with his rhythmically raucous ‘cowboy’ themes, will resonate in the mind’s ear for eternity. His better themes, as in the above, can easily compare favorably with Puccini’s and Donizettis best.
The comparison to Puccini and Donizetti is absolutely irrelevant.
Before I heard Morricone’s magnificent – and lush themes, I was fairly ‘drenched’ in the more well-known and heart-rending melodies of Puccini, Donizetti, Bellini, and yes, Verdi.
When I heard Morricone I did NOT think these composers beautiful themes/arias (“Casta Diva”, “Vissi d’Arte”, “Ricorda Vincitor”, “O Mio Babbino Caro”, “e Lucdvan le Stelle”, et al) could ever be approached in similarity of deep musical content by “film'” composers. How very lacking I was in not according these highly gifted men their due in *their* fields of composition. The Film composers can never ‘exceed’ the Classical Masters in their deeper and more challenging areas of Development and fully expounded key relations in the classical forms; but many do exciting “Theme Transformations”. [See/hear Morricone’s score for Once Upon a Time in America, and his Wagnerian-Lisztian theme transformations]