MovieScore Media explores the ever expanding Chinese film industry with its latest release for the 2015 war epic The Cairo Declaration (Kai luo xua yuan) with music by Ye Xiaogang and Chad Cannon. The old-fashioned, orchestral score follows in the best tradition of Hollywood epics as it underscores the ferocious events of World War II on the Asian front. The 1943 meeting between Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill serves as the backdrop to international intrigue, a story of spies and traitors, as well as a subplot featuring Mao Zedong back in his Yan'an home base...

Ye Xiaogang and Chad Cannon's score for The Cairo Declaration is very much in the mould of the traditional orchestral Hollywood epics. This is a big and bold score that contains many beautiful themes.

The album contains 21 tracks (57 min, 42 sec) and there are so many intricate and interesting tracks that it's hard to know where to start singing its praises. As I always do when reviewing, I listened to the score for a few days and then put it aside for a week and then listened to it several more times, For me, it's always a sign of a good score when I find that repeat listenings brings forth a new favourite segment of the music. And this happened so many times when listening to The Cairo Declaration that I lost count.

The album opens with 'Red Star Over China', one of its strongest and most notable tracks. Other highlights include 'Blossoming Romance'; 'Enemies of the Nazi Regime'; 'Mao and the Journalist'; 'America Enters the War'; 'War's End' (which seems to have been inspired by John Williams's music from Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope); and the closing song 'Pray'.

For lovers of beautiful, rousing scores this is an essential addition to your collection.

10

Darren Rea