Gabriel Yared and Cyrille Aufort have delivered a beautiful, classical-sounding orchestral score; a romantic and thematic work permeated by a sense of forbidden passion throughout. The pairing of highly experienced composer Gabriel Yared (an Oscar winner for The English Patient in 1997 and the author of over 70 feature film scores including Cold Mountain, The Talented Mr Ripley and Betty Blue) and newcomer Cyrille Aufort (who worked as an orchestrator for Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat and got his impressive feature film scoring breakthrough with Splice in 2009) is a great one where the result is an engaging, sophisticated and handsome score that fits the film perfectly and works beautifully as a stand-alone listening experience...

The score for A Royal Affair will be warmly welcomed by fans of classical soundtracks. At its heart this is a beautiful album packed with emotionally charged themes.

While listening to the album I was reminded of other works: 'Caroline's Theme' brought to mind Howard Shore's work on The Silence of the Lambs. 'Hope Theme' reminded me of James Horner's work for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - actually this theme crops up a few time throughout this score. 'Love Scene', 'Execution' and 'Adagio' also reminded me of Normand Corbeil's soundtrack for the Heavy Rain console game.

Spread over 15 beautiful tracks, this album lasts for 36 min, 40 sec - I could have happily listed to much more.

8

Darren Rea