Iconic film and TV Themes

This programme of film and TV music starts regally. The well known film composer Hans Zimmer wrote the opening theme music to the celebrated TV series The Crown, about the life of the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth ll. In the opening sequence the stately, swelling melody associates one immediately with the liquid gold that transforms into a crown. The first season of The Crown also features Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1. This march, composed in 1901, which includes the famous ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, is always played at the BBC “Last Night of the Proms”.

The King’s Speech is a film about Queen Elizabeth ll’s father Edward VI. The moving scene in which the stuttering king, ‘directed’ by his speech therapist, gives a radio broadcast during the Second World War, is appropriately accompanied by the second movement from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

John Williams who has composed at least one hundred and thirty soundtracks should not be omitted from any film music programme. We play the themes from Superman and Star Wars Episode 7: “The Force Awakens”. At the end of the nineteenth century, and later during the Second World War, a song of freedom and resistance was heard in Italy entitled Bella ciao. The song suddenly became world famous thanks to the Spanish Netflix series La Casa de Papel. In March 2020, Italians started singing it again, this time from their balconies during the Corona crisis. The Habanera song from Georges Bizet’s 1875 opera Carmen was featured in several films, such as The Aristocats and Trainspotting, and TV series, such as The Simpsons and Six Feet Under. The other pieces come from the science fiction thriller Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio, the romantic musical film La La Land with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone and The English Patient with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche.

The programme is introduced by Eric Robillard, known for presenting family concerts and as a developer of educational music projects with, amongst others, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra.

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