Peter Maxwell Davies, the present "Master of the Queen’s Music(k)" in service to Queen Elizabeth II, is a
leading British composer with a huge body of work, but only a couple of film scores to his credit. The two
he composed for one of the most erratic and, frankly, weird directors of the 1960s, Ken Russell, are featured
in re-recordings on this album. THE BOYFRIEND, a free 1971 adaptation of Sandy Wilson’s musical, sees
the composer with pre-existing material, while THE DEVILS is a completely original score in more than one sense.
Enjoy!
The sharing period on the flac has ended.
You will find an mp3 version linked below
Music Composed by Peter Maxwell Davies
Played by Aquarius
Conducted by Nicholas Cleobury
Mad! Mad, I say!
"British director Ken Russell (*1927) started out training for a naval career, but after wartime RAF and merchant
navy service he switched goals and went into ballet. Supplementing his dancing income as an actor and still photographer,
Russell put together a handful of amateur films in the 50s before being hired as a staff director by the BBC. Russell made a
name for himself (albeit a name not always spoken in reverence) during the first half of the ’60s by directing a series of iconoclastic
TV dramatizations of the lives of famous composers and dancers. And if he felt that the facts were getting in the way of his
story, he’d make up his own — frequently bordering on the libelous. If he had any respect for the famous persons whose lives
he probed, it was secondary to his fascination with revealing all warts and open wounds.
A film director since 1963, Russell burst into the international consciousness with 1969’s Women in Love, a hothouse version of the
D.H. Lawrence novel. No director who staged a scene in a mainstream movie in which two men wrestled in the nude could escape notice,
and thus Russell became more of a "star" than his actors. While some viewers had their sensibilities shaken by Women in Love,
others had their sensibilities run through the blender with Russell’s next film, The Music Lovers. Predicated on the notion that
Peter Tchaikovsky and his wife were, respectively, a homosexual and nymphomaniac, the film’s much discussed "highlight" is a
scene in which Nina Tchaikovsky (Glenda Jackson) allows the inmates in the cellar of an insane asylum to reach up and play with h
er privates. But this was kid’s stuff compared to Russell’s The Devils (1971), an ultraviolent and perversely anachronistic adaptation
of Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun. Russell returned to his musical theater roots with The Boy Friend (1971), a bloated version
of Sandy Wilson’s intimate 1920s pastiche, and then went back to biography with the insanely inaccurate Lisztomania (1974) and
Valentino (1975). The latter film not only suggested that Rudolph Valentino (Rudolf Nureyev) performed totally nude in his silent
films, but also offered up the spectacle of Huntz Hall as producer Jesse Lasky. At this point, even some of the most devoted fans
of Russell’s outrageous (but undeniably brilliant) visual sense were fed up with his shock-for-shock’s-sake approach and his
all-consuming narcissism. Following the mind-bending horrors of Altered States in 1980, Russel maintained momentum with Gothic,
a visually lavish retelling of the weekend of debauchery that gave birth to the Frankenstein mythos in the mind of a young female
author named Mary Shelley. Though the film may have had its fair share of detractors due to Russel’s signature departure from
historical fact, it nevertheless aquired a cult following thanks to its heavy atmosphere and dark fantasy. After detailing the
exploits of yet another famed author (this time Oscar Wilde) in the 1988 comedy drama Salome’s Last Dance, Russel turned
out another curiousity in the form of that same year’s Lair of the White Worm. Based on Dracula author Bram Stoker’s short
story of the same name of featuring a memorable performance by a pre-romantic comedy stalwart Hugh Grant, Lair of the
White Worm’s outrageous, sex vampire excess and near surreal humor earned the effort a proud spot in many a cult movie
aficionado’s collection. He was back in his old form with 1991’s Whore, which conveyed several times over that life on the
streets is hell — then for good measure, said it a few more times. Backed by a childishly slavering ad campaign, Whore
brought Russell into the spotlight again for what would be the last time in some while.
Dabbling in television for much of the 1990s, may of Russel’s efforts during the decade were fairly unmemorable despite
featuring such noteworthy actors as Richard Dreyfuss (Prisoner of Honor) and Bryan Brown (Dogboys). Just when it
seemed as if Russel’s career may have lost steam for the last time, the ever unpredictable director struck back in 2002
with the unhinged comedy horror musical The Fall of the Louse of Usher. Brimming with the director’s trademark debauchery
and offering a curious meld of various stories by timeless horror author Edgar Allan Poe, the film may have found Russell
back in proper form, but still somehow managed to elude audiences due to both its independent origins and a virtually
nonexistant advertising campaign."
Vanessa Redgrave in The Devils.
Source: Collins Classics CD, 1990 (my rip!)
Format: FLAC (-5), DDD Stereo
File Size: 250 MB
"Max"
DOWNLOAD LINK (mp3, 320k) – https://mega.co.nz/#!1YpTQYpJ!dxYpjApY_tn6QJgqbvDr33j689NnkR8y2mz2iRh VzC8
Me too! Thanks! ๐
The Devils I remember only a couple of scenes. Don’t remember the music. Know that Glenda Jackson passed on that film ‘wanting nothing to do with that crap’. So Vanessa Redgrave played the nutty hunchback nun. The movie was notorious for the extras really ‘going at it’ during filming. I believe a DVD is available in the UK but not USA.
Russell always took things a little too far. Women in Love probably being his most enjoyable film if you had patience and could endure the long drawn out scenes- and could figure what the hell it was all about. Filled with terrific actors and visuals. The Devils on the other hand was something where Russell pushed the envelope as far as Neptune.
All others covered.
Modern reissues: The British Film Institute released the UK theatrical version (111 minutes) on DVD on March 19, 2012.
The soundtracks of the films of Ken Russell are quite interesting:
Billion-Dollar Brain_1967 (Richard Rodney Benneth), Women in Love_1969 (Georges Delerue), Altered States_1980 (John Corigliano), Crimes of Passion_1984 (Rick Wakeman); Gothic_1986 (Thomas Dolby), The Lair ofthe White Worm_1988 (Stanislas SYREWICZ) …
Thank You Wimpel69 !!!
———- Post added at 11:37 AM ———- Previous post was at 11:36 AM ———-
Thank you
madmatt…. , you cannot receive messages yet, you need more credits (= posts) on the board.
All others covered.
———- Post added at 08:53 AM ———- Previous post was at 08:48 AM ———-
why can’t i see the link? please help
Others: Covered!
Rest: Next week.
Please do not post any more requests in this thread. Thank you!
DOWNLOAD LINK (mp3, 320k) – https://mega.co.nz/#!1YpTQYpJ!dxYpjApY_tn6QJgqbvDr33j689NnkR8y2mz2iRh VzC8
A great afternoon, that….
DOWNLOAD LINK (mp3, 320k) – https://mega.co.nz/#!1YpTQYpJ!dxYpjApY_tn6QJgqbvDr33j689NnkR8y2mz2iRh VzC8
Thank You wimpel69
We, lucky dogs!!!