Taking a wonderfully old-fashioned, thematic approach with the music firmly rooted in the tradition of melody, up and coming composer Pinar Toprak has written a very romantic score for Daniel Adams's drama, The Lightkeepers. Set in the year 1912 on Cape Cod, the film tells a story of love, romance and friendship with Richard Dreyfuss playing the lead as an old, grumpy lightkeeper. The music is scored for strings, woodwinds, piano and fiddle and fuses long melody lines and beautiful harmony with American folk music elements...

Pinar Toprak is a young Turkish composer. What's most surprising about her work for The Lightkeepers is that the music feels like it has the emotional depth of someone much older and wiser - as though it's been written by a composer who has spent years maturing and perfecting their art. With that in mind I can't wait to see how she develops in the future.

There are so many emotional themes in this score that it's one of the few albums I've heard where every second of music pulls an emotion out of the listener.

'I Never Stopped Caring' is a beautiful collection of themes. The flute solo, that comes in around three quarters through the track, is particularly memorable.

Likewise 'She Belongs in Here / John's Rescue' is another emotionally charged track that blends so many beautiful themes - more themes than most soundtracks manage to explore in a full album.

Throughout this score I caught elements of John Barry (at his very best) as well as hints of John Williams and James Horner. But at no point did it feel like Toprak was paying homage to other composers - this is all very much her own work. In fact I didn't spot any "borrowed" segments of music from other composer's works at all here (which is unusual for me).

The only downside was that the MP3 files we reviewed had some very minor sound issues. On a number of tracks there were very small issues with the sound quality. Most were just quick clicks or distortions and so were hardly noticeable. 'You Mustn't Go' was the worst effected. It's only really noticeable if you are wearing decent quality headphones, but there are at least three instances were the sound balance momentary glitches and there is a "click" as though you're listening to a vinyl copy.

This is an essential purchase for lovers of classical, emotional scores. And when you consider that Amazon are selling this as an MP3 album for under £5 there's really no excuse not to buy this.

10

Darren Rea