The Hunger

Howard was musical director on this film directed by Tony Scott starring Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie. Producer Dick Shepherd.

Howard’s note: Tony wanted to create a score largely using classical music and I did much research, often going to his home in Wimbledon in the early morning with stacks of recordings to play to him. One of these was the duet for 2 sopranos from Delibes ‘Lakme’, which I found on an old recording featuring the French coloratura soprano Mady Mesplé. Tony chose this for the ‘temple’ scene between Deneuve and  Sarandon and I made a new recording of it for use in the film with two excellent sopranos, Elaine Barry and Judith Rees, myself conducting The Sinfonia of London. (This recording was later to become known world-wide when it was adopted by British Airways as their signature tune, Tony having directed the film.) Howard Shelley  joined with Ralph Holmes and Raphael Wallfisch to record the first movement of Schubert’s Piano Trio in E flat. Ralph recorded the Gigue from Bach’s Violin Partita in E and Raphael the Prelude to Bach’s solo cello sonata in G, to which Bowie mimed. I was persuaded to appear in one scene as a pianist playing in the restaurant of Dolphin  Square, for which I wrote and played a ‘Dolphin Square Blues’. The piano music that we see in the film, apparently played by Catherine Deneuve, is in fact played by myself, the improvisation on the theme from ‘Lakme’ by Delibes and Maurice Ravel’s ‘Le Gibet’. Tony wanted to add a synthesizer score and I introduced him to Hans Zimmer, then working at The Snake Ranch Studio in Fulham but Tony eventually used a score by Michel Rubini and Denny Jaeger with electronics by David Lawson. It is hard however to exactly separate these elements.