Witness the world premiere of one of the greatest… | Little White Lies

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Wit­ness the world pre­mière of one of the great­est film scores of all time

02 Mar 2022

Man in fur-lined coat, goggles, and scarf against snowy background with statues in the distance.
Man in fur-lined coat, goggles, and scarf against snowy background with statues in the distance.
Eal­ing Stu­dios’ Scott of the Antarc­tic is set for a his­toric Bar­bi­can per­for­mance this month.

It takes immense skill and crafts­man­ship to cre­ate a sound­track for a movie. The music should seam­less­ly fuse with the images and work as an enhanc­ing agent to what we’re see­ing pro­ject­ed on screen. Yet, if the com­pos­er har­bours a grander vision for their work, then that score should also be enjoyed as a stand-alone piece of art, some­thing which tran­scends the medium.

In the years since the release of the Eal­ing Stu­dios clas­sic, Scott of the Antarc­tic, in 1948, its dis­tinc­tive orig­i­nal score by the leg­endary British com­pos­er Ralph Vaugh­an Williams has gone on to have a life of its own. The film, direct­ed by Charles Frend and star­ring one of most pop­u­lar British actors of the time, John Mills, charts the famous Ter­ra Nova expe­di­tion to the South Pole and the tragedy that befell its intre­pid title char­ac­ter and mem­bers of his team.

Vaugh­an Williams’s rich sym­phon­ic score is epic to the point that it play­ful­ly nudges at the bound­aries of the cin­e­ma screen. It con­jures a sense of som­bre fore­bod­ing as the plucky team set off on their mis­sion, switch­ing to a tone of envelop­ing cos­mic calami­ty when their sur­vival is test­ed. Every­one agreed that if Vaugh­an Williams could be inter­est­ed, he was the one man in the world to write the score,” recalled the studio’s direc­tor of music, Ernest Irv­ing, sug­gest­ing that the mak­ers of the film saw it as a work of pres­tige rather than a genre quick­ie”.

As such, to cel­e­brate the 150th anniver­sary of Vaugh­an Williams’s birth, the BBC Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra and Cho­rus are set to pro­vide the world pre­mière of the orig­i­nal score accom­pa­ny­ing the screen­ing of Frend’s film at London’s Bar­bi­can Cen­tre. British con­duc­tor Mar­tyn Brab­bins leads the musi­cal charge with star soloist sopra­no Eliz­a­beth Watts.

The screen­ing will take place on 11 March in the Bar­bi­can Hall, and tick­ets are avail­able now – we’d high­ly rec­om­mend you jump on this rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to see one of cinema’s great (if less­er-known) film scores pre­sent­ed in its full glory.

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