Ennio Morricone - La Légende du Pianiste sur l'Océan (Original soundtrack) [White]

The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean is Ennio Morricone transforming a piano into an ocean, and this numbered edition of 2,500 copies on white vinyl is the pressing that this score deserves.

By 1998, Ennio Morricone had already composed music for more than 500 films, but he still treated the story of Giuseppe Tornatore, that of a piano prodigy born and raised aboard an ocean liner, as if it were the only one that mattered. The film, adapted from Alessandro Baricco's monologue Novecento and carried by Tim Roth's performance, follows a man who never sets foot on the ground, and Morricone's music does the same thing as the character, it drifts and swells and never quite arrives at the right place. The score won a Golden Globe, one more line on a CV already filled with Grammys and BAFTAs.

Playing Love is the beating heart of the record, a theme so simple and devastating that Morricone lets it return twice, like a memory the film can't chase away. The 1900 theme sets the whole world in motion with some piano figures, Peacherine Rag lets the ship's ball scenes swing without ever losing the melancholy of Morricone underneath, and Lost Boys Calling closes things out on an entirely different register, a real song with Roger Waters and the late Eddie Van Halen.

This numbered edition on white vinyl is designed for this type of listening.