Topic: Rachel Portman
Soundtrack Features Original Music by Academy Award® Winner Rachel Portman AVAILABLE HERE Lakeshore Records releases the soundtrack for THE DUCHESS. The soundtrack contains original music composed by Rachel Portman (Emma, The Cider House Rules). Academy Award® nominees Keira Knightley (Atonement) and Ralph Fiennes (The English Patient, Schindler's List) head the international cast, which also includes Dominic Cooper (The History Boys), and Charlotte Rampling (Swimming Pool). The film is based on Amanda Foreman's biography of Georgiana Cavendish, the scandalous Duchess of Devonshire. In 1996 Rachel Portman became the first female composer to win an Academy Award® for her score to the film Emma. The British composer studied at the University of Oxford. She earned the British Film Institute's Young Composer of the Year Award in 1989 for the mini-series "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit". After several years composing for TV movies and BBC series she scored her first Hollywood feature film with 1992s Used People. Since then she has composed music for a variety of films including The Joy Luck Club, Benny & Joon, Emma, The Cider House Rules, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Chocolat, and more recently Infamous, The Lake House, Mona Lisa Smile, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. THE DUCHESS is based on the story of an extraordinary woman who rose to fame by staying true to her passions in a world of protocol, gossip and social rules - and paid the price. Long before the concept existed, the Duchess of Devonshire (Knightey) was the original 'it girl'. Like her direct ancestor Princess Diana, she was ravishing, glamorous, and adored by an entire country. Determined to be a player in the wider affairs of the world, she proved that she could out-gamble, out-drink, and outwit most of the aristocratic men who surrounded her. But even as her own power and popularity grew, she was haunted by the fact that the only man in England she seemingly could not seduce was her very own husband, the Duke (Fiennes). And when she tried to find her own way to be true to her heart and loyal to her duty, the resulting controversies and convoluted liaisons pushed her to the brink of risking banishment by her husband, family and all of London society.