GEORGES DELERUE: MUSIQUE DE FILMS 1961-1992

To mark the March 1992 disappearance of composer Georges Delerue, Ecoutez le cinema! presents a 20th Anniversary album in association with Radio Classique:

Georges Delerue, film music 1961-1992

In March 1992 the immense composer Georges Delerue died in Los Angeles after many decades of a life devoted to music and films. In 2012, the 20th anniversary of Delerue's death provides the occasion for s...everal tribute-concerts with the Lille Orchestra (March 2, 3 & 7) in France and in Belgium, accompanied by a week of special programmes on Radio Classique.

At a time when the music of Delerue is again returning to the screen in films made by a new generation of directors (La Guerre est declaree, Fantastic Mr Fox), the present album comes as a timely release. This CD provides listeners with a musical summary, a clear synthesis of the major landmarks in the composer's career. It includes not only Delerue's “standards” for filmmakers Francois Truffaut (Jules et Jim, La Nuit americaine, Le Dernier metro), Jean-Luc Godard (Le Mepris), Philippe de Broca (Cartouche, Le Diable par la queue), Louis Malle (Viva Maria!), Claude Miller (Garde a vue) and Oliver Stone (Salvador), but also songs written for films and sung by stars such as Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, Georges Brassens or Yves Montand. The track-listing is completed by the composer's sublime (and premonitory) Concerto de l’adieu composed for the film Dien Bien Phu, which was Delerue's last original soundtrack for a French picture... and also a new version of the love-theme from Tribulations d’un Chinois en Chine by Alexandre Desplat, a vibrant tribute from one of the new world's great talents to the composer who most influenced his own vocation.

As part of these 20th Anniversary celebrations, the anthology entitled Georges Delerue, musiques de films 1961-1992 represents a vital first approach to understanding Delerue the composer, and also an initiation into his universe: each one of the 24 tracks contributes to the story of the young man born in the northern city of Roubaix who devoted his life to music and films, and moved to the hills above Hollywood to complete this story with all the grandeur of the truly modest.

CD jewel-box, 12-page booklet, 24 titles, 75 minutes of music.

1. Grand choral - Petitgirard Laurent
2. Camille
3. Trois petites notes de musique - Montand Yves
4. Cartouche generique
5. Vacances
6. Une petite ile
7. Cent mille dollars au soleil
8. Theme de jeanne
9. Ah, les petites femmes de paris - Bardot Brigitte
10. Adagio
11. Must it happen once to everyone
12. Indicatif
13. Main title
14. Ballade derisoire / bof l'important c'est d'aimer
15. Heureux qui comme ulysse - Brassens Georges
16. Generique
17. Generique
18. Les joies du maquis - Vander Maurice
19. Generique fin
20. Chantal martineau
21. Siege at santa-ana
22. Main title
23. Concerto de l'adieu - Davis Michael
24. Alexandrine pour alexandra - Desplat Alexandre