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The 1996 film won the the Oscar for Best Original Dramatic Score, awarded to Gabriel Yared for his unforgettable music.
Courtesy of Craft Recordings
Los Angeles, CA (February 13, 2025)—Varèse Sarabande and Craft Recordings announce the vinyl debut of Gabriel Yared’s acclaimed score for The English Patient. Set for release on March 28th and available for pre-order today, the Oscar®-winning score—performed by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, featuring pianist John Constable and vocalist Márta Sebestyén, and conducted by Harry Rabinowitz—will be available as a 2-LP set on “Saharan Sun” orange vinyl, plus as a limited-edition Barnes & Noble exclusive “Sands of Love” custard pressing.
The English Patient is a 1996 romantic war drama film directed by Anthony Minghella, which received 12 nominations at the 69th Academy Awards, winning nine, including Best Picture, Best Director, as well as Best Original Dramatic Score, awarded to Yared for his unforgettable music for the film. Now, this collection will be available on vinyl for the first time ever, delighting cinema fans and soundtrack collectors alike.
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When director Anthony Minghella invited Yared to score The English Patient, he presented the composer with several challenges. The film takes place in Italy and North Africa, but its characters have geographic and cultural roots ranging from Canadian and British to Sikh and Hungarian. “We were trying to make a film that had one foot in Europe and the other in Africa,” Minghella explains. “The film plays many games with issues of nationality, so I thought the music should play games with issues of nationality, as well. The very first idea I had was of a woman’s voice, unaccompanied, singing a lament, with a view of the desert from the air.”
By working closely with Minghella from the outset—reading the script, attending the first days of shooting, visiting on locations and viewing the earliest assemblies—Yared created a complex web of compositions that capture both the impressionistic nature of the film’s structure and the emotional essence of its central relationships.
In a 2020 interview with E. Nina Rothe, Yared expanded on this philosophy, noting that he is the sort of composer who likes to be involved in the filmmaking process from the very beginning. He said, “I don’t like to be called on a film at the end. I try as much as possible to be there [from] the beginning. I say, even at the script stage, please call me. And then I read the script, I spend time with the director, [male] or female, because to me it’s like a marriage. You cannot marry forever, you have to spend time first engaged, and then you get married. Like on ‘The English Patient’ it was more than eight months, to meet Anthony, to get to know him, to exchange musical ideas and most of this music had been written before the shooting began.”
It’s this dedication that led to the film score being honored at the Academy Awards, and it being widely regarded as an all-time classic within the film score genre. In the liner notes written by Derk Richardson that accompany the vinyl release, Minghella reflected on the score’s success: “The scores I have always loved are those where all you have to do is say the title and its music just starts playing in my head.”
Now, the film will finally be complemented by the first-ever vinyl pressing of Gabriel Yared’s classic score.
Click here to pre-order The English Patient (Original Soundtrack Recording).
About Varèse Sarabande:
Varèse Sarabande is one of the leading and most prolific producers of film and television soundtracks. The label was formed as a merger between Varèse International Records (named for composer Edgar Varèse) and Sarabande Records (named after a musical dance form). Initially a classical label, Varèse Sarabande has released thousands of soundtracks and new recordings of classic film scores conducted by celebrated composers with the world’s best-known orchestras since 1977. The label upped the ante for fans by creating the Varèse Sarabande CD Club—releasing exclusive limited-edition deluxe soundtracks featuring rare and long-requested titles. The CD Club ran initially from 1989–92 and was restarted in 2001, and Varèse continues to create Deluxe Editions of cherished scores that might otherwise never see a release. Since joining Concord in 2018, Varèse Sarabande continues its mission to release new scores, high quality vinyl and Deluxe Edition soundtracks.
For more info, visit VareseSarabande.com and follow on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
About Craft Recordings:
Craft Recordings is home to one of the largest and most essential collections of master recordings and compositions in the world. Its storied repertoire includes landmark releases from icons such as Joan Baez, John Coltrane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Celia Cruz, Miles Davis, Isaac Hayes, John Lee Hooker, Little Richard, R.E.M., Joan Sebastian, and Traveling Wilburys. Plus, the catalog recordings of celebrated contemporary acts including A Day to Remember, Evanescence, Alison Krauss, Nine Inch Nails, Taking Back Sunday and Violent Femmes, to name just a few. Renowned imprints with catalogs issued under the Craft banner include Fania, Fantasy, Fearless, Musart, Nitro, Panart, Prestige, Riverside, Rounder, Specialty, Stax, Vanguard, Varèse Sarabande, Vee-Jay and Victory, among many others. Craft creates thoughtfully curated packages, with a meticulous devotion to quality and a commitment to preservation—ensuring that these recordings endure for new generations to discover. Craft is also home to the Billie Holiday and Tammy Wynette estates which preserve and protect their respective names, likeness and music through day-to-day legacy management of these cultural trailblazers.
Craft Recordings is the catalog label team for Concord. For more info, visit CraftRecordings.com and follow on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
