Hopkins in music: the actor’s debut album as a composer

When one thinks of landscapes depicted in music, there are many examples in the classical repertoire: Smetana, who drew inspiration from the course of the River Vltava from its source to Prague, Mendelssohn, who in "The Hebrides" paints a vivid picture of Fingal’s Cave and the Scottish cliffs overlooking the Atlantic; Grieg, who depicts a Norwegian morning in "Peer Gynt"; or Sibelius, whose music allows one to breathe in Finnish nature to the full – its forests, its ice and its rarefied skies. The unspoilt Nordic landscape is among those that have most profoundly shaped the music of many composers. And Nordic landscapes are also what can be heard in the music of a man who was not a composer by profession, but who would have liked to be one: Anthony Hopkins’s first album has, in fact, just been released by Decca a few days ago. In Life is a Dream, the 88-year-old actor pursues his dream: music. Hopkins, in fact, became an actor after giving up on the idea of attending the conservatoire, daunted by what he perceived as its excessive difficulty. Yet, for Hopkins, music was never merely a pastime or a hobby. For 81 years—ever since his mother gave him a small piano at the age of seven—music has always been a guiding light: “Music was my first desire, my first dream. I’ve been composing music all my life.”

This recording for the Rossoblù label now enshrines Anthony Hopkins in the pantheon of so-called classical composers. His northern Welsh roots are the foundation, for example, of the 1947 Suite in three movements (“Circus”, “Bracken Road”, “The Plaza”) – characterised by rustic and idyllic atmospheres – or, again, My Fatherland, based on traditional Welsh themes. We are not dealing with a revolutionary composer who breaks the mould: Hopkins’s music is firmly rooted in the tradition of tonal music. The pieces featured on this album are the works of a neo-Romantic composer who prioritises melody from a distinctly cinematic perspective: his scores – highly evocative, like perfect film soundtracks – are brimming with melodic lyricism, catchy leitmotifs and authentic themes that are always easily recognisable. The result, thanks in part to the orchestrations by his friend Stephen Barton, is music that is often descriptive, never abstract, in which one can hear echoes of Copland, Williams, Elgar and Khachaturian.

The cinematic element is, therefore, the other defining feature of Hopkins’s music: powerful brass sections playing in unison to create tension, as in a thriller; sustained strings in the upper register for moments of relaxation; exotic elements; distant choral voices; playful big-band-style passages; and poignant solos on the violin, cello or piano: all of which, for the listener, tells an imaginary story. The performance features the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, the Bach Choir, the Winchester Cathedral Choir, Gregorio Nieto on the cello and Sergio Tiempo on the piano; Gustavo Dudamel conducts.