Michel Plasson / Orchestre Du Capitole De Toulouse - Kosma & Jaubert: Les enfants du paradis et autres musiques de films de Marcel Carné (2024)

This is an exceptional soundtrack album, presenting four notable film scores -- two by Maurice Jaubert and two Joseph Kosma -- associated with the movies of Marcel Carne. For those unfamiliar, Carne, in collaboration with poet/playwright Jacques Prevert, made a string of some the most influential and acclaimed movies to come out of France in the years between 1934 and 1950. The best known of them is Children of Paradise, a miracle of a period epic shot right in the middle of the Nazi occupation, but his work also included two entries in a stylistic category later known as poetic realism, which was the direct antecedent to American film noir --Le Quai des brumes (1938) and Le Jour Se Leve (1939). All are represented here, along with his 1946 Les Portes de la Nuit, in beautiful performances by the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse under Michel Plasson, in suites ranging from 14 to 27 minutes. Jaubert's music for Le Quai des Brumes ranges from the subdued to the exultant, in a spellbinding array of material that easily stands on its own as a concert work. Le Jour Se Leve is more unified musically, as its subject is more definably tragic -- the music itself, especially in its final section, recalls the work of Maurice Ravel (especially his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand). The real treasures here, however, are Kosma's scores, especially his work from Children of Paradise, which is represented by a brilliant 14-minute suite. The sound is excellent and the annotation is very thorough, in one of the soundtrack highlights of EMI's classical library. © Bruce Eder /TiVo