Alexandre Desplat
Film composer Alexandre Desplat talks to Michael Beek about realising boyhood ambitions – and his foray into the concert hall
Michael Beek talks to the composer of the soundtracks to Little Women, The King’s Speech and many more
It was Peter Webber’s film Girl With a Pearl Earring that first exposed many people to Alexandre Desplat; his music created an atmosphere of curious beauty and earned him BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations. That 2003 film marked the beginning of a meteoric rise in the field of Hollywood film music, but it wasn’t the beginning for Desplat, who was in his mid-forties when he embarked on what would be the most high-profile period of his career. It was a long time coming.
‘That was my 50th score for cinema, so it was about time that I had opportunities that were different from just doing French movies,’ he explains. ‘I’d been waiting for that moment so much, artistically, that I was ready to give whatever I had to give and I was ready to speak.’
And speak he did, averaging six feature film scores a year in the period that followed and receiving his first Oscar nomination in 2007, for Stephen Frears’s The Queen. These were holy grail moments for Desplat, whose film music dreams were sown early. After childhood years learning the flute and playing repertoire from Bach to Debussy, cinema made an impression.
‘It started in the middle of my teen years,’ he says. ‘Suddenly I heard these incredible scores and the versatility of the composers. It became a passion for me and I realised film scores were something incredibly rich that I could fit into.’
Particular inspiration came from Georges Delerue and Maurice Jarre, who both cracked Hollywood; Jarre was the first French composer to win an Oscar in 1963, for Lawrence of Arabia, followed by a second in 1966, for Doctor Zhivago. Suffice to say, Desplat felt able to dream big.
‘That was something incredible for a young musician to look up to,’ he tells me. ‘There was a light to follow in Jarre and Delerue. I absolutely loved their music, because it was orchestral, it was lyrical and they had a very strong sense of storytelling.’
Like Jarre and Delerue, Desplat spent formative years composing for the theatre and that time spent watching rehearsals and being a key part of the narrative process has certainly paid off on screen. But Desplat can also thank his parents’ eclectic music tastes for his own versatility as a composer. ‘There was a great musical tolerance at home, so there was a huge variety of things, from classical to jazz to what we now call World Music.’ He goes on, ‘If you listen to my scores you might hear little African polyrhythms, some very lush melodies à la Caruso, cimbalom – which comes from my Greek roots – or a chord from Bill Evans. It’s a real mix of things.’
Such adaptability has led to some of the most memorable and inventive film music of recent years, with one such score winning Desplat his first Oscar in 2015. Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel is a fine example of the composer’s wit and colourful imagination, spurred on by an enduring collaboration with a director with whom he has now worked on five feature films. It’s one of several creative partnerships he enjoys and, as he tells me, he is grateful for them. ‘That’s something that you dream of when you’re a young composer, that you can meet your Hitchcock, your David Lean, your Fellini. With Wes Anderson each movie is a new chapter of exploration, and each time I try things that I’ve never done before. In that matter I’ve been lucky.’
The LSO has been another regular collaborator, recording many times with Desplat over the years. Principal flute Gareth Davies recalls working on the composer’s other Oscarwinner, The Shape of Water. ‘We had 12 flutes – concert, alto and bass – to create the deep watery soundworld. It was a great sound in the studio but in the cinema it was really amazing. Alexandre is a perfectionist; he knows exactly what he wants and insists upon it. He rarely wants the flute to play too loud – in fact, I often have to play quieter for him than any other composer in the studio.’
Music from that and The Grand Budapest Hotel features on a new album performed by flautist Emmanuel Pahud and L’orchestre National de France. Airlines sees new virtuoso arrangements of film themes from Desplat’s resumé, and it presented the composer with an opportunity to place his instrument of choice centrestage: ‘Some of these pieces are iconic for me; they were important in my career, so I arranged them accordingly to give the flute part a stronger, larger palette, and not just be in the orchestra. The flute really has been at the centre of my musical life.’
The film themes sit alongside two concert works written for flute and orchestra – the symphonie concertante Pelléas et Mélisande and the title solo work Airlines. For soloist Emmanuel Pahud it was clear they were written by someone who knows the instrument well. ‘You notice immediately in these two works that Alexandre is a flautist himself; the way he incorporates the breath within his musical line in the flute part feels so natural, an extension of the breath. The flute becomes the voice of the composer, not just a simple instrument.’
Desplat admits that writing music without film was a daunting prospect, but that it left him with the desire to do it again. ‘To be a composer for the concert hall is another big step for me, so it was very frightening. Having a story like Pelléas et Mélisande helps – it’s not a blank page, but there are still many holes that you have to fill. You create the “film” yourself; you have to be both the director and the composer! ’
Alexandre Desplat’s Airlines is released on Warner Classics on 28 August
‘‘To
write for the concert hall is a big step for me… You have to be both the director and the composer!
’’