Canter Bridge

Alexandre Desplat’s minimalist score fitly accompanies the taut psychological drama that is the 2007 motion picture that imaginatively chronicles the tectonic shifts that were occurring in the royal family behind closed doors in the wake of Diana’s tragic death in a Paris highway tunnel. Alternately brooding and winsome, Desplat produces a soundtrack that underscores Queen Elizabeth II’s rather heroic change of mind regarding her family’s role vis-à-vis ‘the people’.

The people were in the streets, not exactly manning the barricades but rather shedding tears that astonished themselves and challenged the stern facade of Buckingham and Balmoral. Desplat’s music is almost spritely, as though hinting at a lightness of heart that would see the Queen through.

The London Symphony Orchestra manages its task exquisitely. No one—neither composer nor ensemble—overpowers the dramatic screen images. Rather, they suggest, they illuminate, they hint at matters of the heart, as soundtracks are meant to do.

This is not likely music you’ll be playing for your grandchildren, obliging them to feel what you felt back then. Yet it is music perfectly adapted to its place. The staccato keyboard and the bubbling clarinet of track three (‘People’s Princess I’) hint that such restraint will be the order of the day throughout. What follows does not disappoint.

Fine writing, in a genre that is meant always to play a subdominant role, behind the curtain, off in the wings, subtly from the margins.

Fitting, at moments, for a queen.