A Promise (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

"A Promise had a series of parameters that were new to me; they were a long series of 'firsts': it was shot in English, it was adapted from a Stefan Zweig novel, and its dramatic setting was the Great War." Filmmaker Patrice Leconte was summing up the unusual place occupied by his 28th full-length feature film A Promise. Another "first" to add to the list: the film A Promise also marks his incandescent encounter with composer Gabriel Yared, the great alchemist of lyricism. "I love the way his writing translates the complexity there is in movements of the heart; his music has propriety and restraint," comments Leconte. Their association ? a state of grace ? produced a vast score for chamber orchestra that is at once delicate and intense, and it functions like the characters' inner voices in that the score reveals sentiments which the characters dare not express... Listening to this highly original soundtrack confirms the obvious: A Promise is no conclusion but a point of departure, a beginning for two creative brothers who are bound to continue. And the music, following after The Moon in the Gutter, The English Patient or The Talented Mr Ripley, is destined to become a Gabriel Yared classic.