AMG Review of Soloist [Music from the Motion Picture]

James Christopher Monger
All Music Guide

Composer Dario Marianelli (#Atonement, #V for Vendetta, #Pride & Prejudice) was given no small task in scoring director Joe Wright's the #Soloist, as its central figure is a homeless, mentally ill cellist obsessed with Beethoven. Utilizing the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and its assistant principal cellist, Ben Hong, Marianelli has crafted both an homage to Beethoven and a crash course in the composer's late romantic period by infusing his own work with excerpts from famous pieces like symphonies "No. 3" and "No. 9." The resulting music is both familiar and otherworldly, with motifs from long-loved sonatas and concertos rising up and out of street noise and dissonance like spirits in the material world.