Amazon.co.uk Review
A film about classical music and mental illness would normally be a box-office disaster. Yet such was the life-affirming brilliance of director Scott Hicks
Shine, the true story of Australian pianist David Helfgott's battle against mental breakdown and his self-expression through Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3, that the film found an adoring audience. Composer David Hirschfelder faced the extraordinarily difficult task of crafting a score of sufficient maturity to stand beside some of the greatest classical masterpieces ever written. Had he failed the film itself could not have worked, yet work it did, and triumphantly so. This soundtrack album features 34 tracks, 14 by Hirschfelder, the remainder bring his arrangements of the classical selections used in the film. Necessarily, the resulting album is somewhat diverse and even fragmented. Despite this, Hirschfelder has done a remarkable job of assembling the pieces into a musical tapestry, in which his own delicately understated compositions sit comfortably besides Vivaldi, Beethoven and, of course, Rachmaninov, with David Helfgott himself playing on many of the tracks.
Shine made the actor Geoffrey Rush an overnight star, going on to roles in
Shakespeare in Love and
Elizabeth--the latter eliciting
another fine score from Hirschfelder.
--Gary S. Dalkin