Working with Alwyn
Following on from an earlier blog post , I asked Philip Lane, well known for his reconstructions of film scores, what it was like to work on Alwyn's scores... How did you first become involved with the film scores of William Alwyn? And what can you remember about working with them? PL: The first Alwyn films I worked on were The Crimson Pirate and A night to remember for which I had no material other than the soundtrack. As with all projects the first job is to extract which passages of the film score are strong enough musically to stand up meaningfully without the pictures. In the case of Crimson Pirate , the record company concerned, Silva Screen, chose the extracts they wanted and put them on a cassette for me. The result, recorded in Prague, I played to Mary Alwyn (aka composer, Doreen Carwithen) at her home in Blythburgh. The garden at William and Mary's home in Blythburgh. Painted by William Alwyn. She was suitably pleased and encouraging in her re