Notes On a Scandal (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

iTunes Review

Philip Glass' pioneering minimalism has become an integral part of the contemporary film scoring palette, a fact that perhaps inspired the composer to push his own cinematic work in new and often surprising ways in recent years on films such as Kundun and The Hours — and on this score for Richard Eyre's disturbing psychological drama, music that also netted Glass his first Academy Award nomination. The composer has revealed he wrote the film's score from the disintegrating psychological viewpoint of the character portrayed by fellow Oscar nominee Judi Dench, a gambit that pays some surprising dividends. There are passages that gratifyingly sound more like the best of Bernard Herrmann's tense, brooding work for Hitchcock than Glass himself, testament to how far the latter has challenged himself. Yet when the minimalist mainstay does revert to the repetitive arpeggios that have too easily caricatured his work, they’re now the perfect accompaniment for the disturbed, obsessive mindset they portray.