James Horner made his name and fortune composing the music for Titanic (Sony‚ 1/98). After the disappointment of The Perfect Storm in 2000‚ he might not have seemed the perfect choice for a film about the English novelist Iris Murdoch‚ but happily all the traits there that made it such a less­than­perfect brain­numbing encounter are absent here in a score that might have been written by Richard Rodney Bennett or Geoffrey Burgon. If anything‚ some listeners might find it all too low­key‚ but given that Richard Eyre’s film concentrates virtually exclusively on Murdoch’s slow sad descent into Alzheimer’s‚ rather than giving us something on her life as a writer‚ then Horner’s gently plangent music would seem to mirror her tragic situation. The music takes the form of a series of rhapsodies‚ two of them quite substantial‚ for violin and orchestra with Joshua Bell as soloist. His playing has the right degree of warmth tempered with an ounce of discretion to reflect the nature of the story. The sea is ever­present in the music. In ‘Part One’‚ strands of themes like so many shifting pebbles‚ rise and fall with the pull of the tide. There are some half­dozen motifs‚ notably the descending little five­note semi­quaver figure on violin that returns throughout like a leitmotif. Piano‚ harp‚ wind and the violin are discreetly and cannily employed to suggest chamber music‚ the composer demonstrating a much lighter touch in thematic material and orchestration than we might have expected. In ‘Part Six’ horns brood darkly‚ suggesting the troubled mind of the author. This motif and a persistent chiming glockenspiel are expanded and enhanced in the following part where the filigree writing for violin‚ exquisitely executed by Bell‚ adorns the texture. In ‘Part Eight’‚ fragments of the score are woven between the Irish folksong The Lark in the Clear Air‚ sung by Kate Winslett as the young Iris‚ though no credit is given. A state of the art recording enhances this welcome addition to the soundtrack repertoire.