All the scores here (expertly reconstructed by Philip Lane, and including some music cues that were cut from final film versions) are from British films, for which Auric wrote some 30; but he also wrote another 100 or so for French, German, Italian and American movies - an astonishing achievement even for so fertile a mind. It was in fact by a French film - Rene Clair's delightful satire A nous la liberte - that he first won our hearts in 1932, and it wasn't until the end of the war that he was taken up by Denham and Ealing.
Having myself played in the orchestra for Caesar and Cleopatra, I can confirm the booklet-note's account of the chaos surrounding that first British venture of his: absolutely endless retakes of the big battle scene music were ordered, driving us all to desperation, because the maverick Gabriel Pascal kept changing his mind again and again. Auric, not one for the 'hit tune' score beloved by commercial exploiters, nevertheless showed in his Moulin Rouge waltz that he could command the popular style with the best. On this disc he is heard running the gamut through the grandiose or the dramatic (It always rains on a Sunday, one of his finest pieces of writing), the menacing (the unforgettably scary Dead of night) and the atmospheric ('At the Sphinx' in Caesar and Cleopatra) to the swirling gaiety of The Titfield Thunderbolt, the perky Passport to Pimlico and the ebullient high spirits of Hue and Cry. From the gusto of the playing throughout, it seems clear that the BBC Philharmonic enjoyed making this disc: understandably so.'