Barnes & Noble
Award-winning composer Alexandre Desplat's (The Queen, Syriana) lyrical score for The Painted Veil -- based on the Somerset Maugham novel -- features piano sensation Lang Lang as soloist ("River Waltz," Erik Satie's "Gnossienne No. 1"), as well as the Prague Symphony Orchestra and Vincent Segal on electric cello.
All Music Guide
Alexandre Desplat's score for director John Curran's film adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel The Painted Veil, about a British couple who travel to China in the 1920s, is not specifically Oriental in tone. But it does have a sense of reserve and a contemplative feel much of the time. The dominant soloist is young Chinese classical pianist Lang Lang, although Vincent Segal's electric cello is also given generous solo space. Desplat provides a lovely "River Waltz," played both orchestrally and as a piano piece by Lang. "The Water Wheel" is a percussion-heavy cue with Desplat himself contributing. (He also plays flutes, piano, and keyboards himself on the soundtrack.) "Cholera," a cue coming toward the film's climax, has the repetitive rhythm of a Philip Glass piece, but that's as assertive as Desplat gets in a score that manages to maintain a mood simultaneously restrained and ominous. William Ruhlmann