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I must confess that when I saw the film " The Last Samurai" I don't remember too much about the musical score. There could be two reasons why this would be the case. Firstly it may have been that the music was not very memorable and therefore didn't stick in the mind, secondly it could be that the film was so well suited to the film and fitted so well with the action and settings that it was representative of, that it became as one, a flawless addition to the overall effect of the big screen creation. On reflection having heard the music for its own sake and having revisited the film, I realise that the second scenario is deffinatley the case and good though the film was, the music in many ways surpasses it and becomes a star in its own right. There seem to be a select few composers who get the task of scoring the big name films and one of the current favourites is Hans Zimmer, known for such worthy musical creations as "Black Hawk Down", "Gladiator" and since "the Last Samurai" score has been responsible for "The Da Vinci Code" score, itself a masterful work of dark atmospheres and grand ecclesiastical themes. Here though the influences are obvious to all, in a film about East meeting West the music had some interesting options available to it, the flowing orchestral creations of traditional western orchestration on the one hand, the exotic and delicate sounds of traditional eastern instruments on the other.

This mixing of Orient and Occident is first ventured into timidly in the opening theme, "A Way of Life", opening on bamboo flutes and distant lute like strings being plucked, this has a Japanese edge to it but once underway moves into more western themes. The gradual build and change of style reminds the listener about the nature of film scores when heard as stand alone pieces of music. Whereas most classical compositions are written with the end user that is the listener traditionally sat in the auditorium, in mind, sound tracks are not. Soundtracks take their cue not so much from the unbounded imagination of the composer but from the screen action that they have to mimic or enhance. What you get then on albums such as this, is music that has to quickly evolve to match the films emotions and story and as such seems to move through many more ideas and changes than less restrictive projects. Purists may not see OST scores as being that vital to the field of classical music but in a world where the diner jacketed listener is no longer sat in the same room

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