Anthony Hopkins, 88, will release his second classical music album this summer, Life is a Dream, performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra of London under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel and with the participation of some virtuosos, such as the cellist Gregorio Nieto and the pianist Sergio Tiempo. It is a collection of orchestral works composed over six decades by the actor. “Music was my first desire, my first aspiration,” Hopkins said in the Decca Records label’s statement announcing the album.
This Thursday, the label released the album’s first single, Bracken Road, a suite for piano and orchestra inspired by Hopkins’ childhood memories of Margam, South Wales, as well as “the streets, meadows, farmland and mountains that surrounded her family home in the 1940s,” according to Decca.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the character who gave the actor the first of his two Oscars — the other came for his role The father, in 2021—, is a Bach lover. Specifically of the Goldberg Variations. A Hannibal, the sequel to The silence of the lambsHopkins himself performs them skillfully on the piano. He has always been a music lover. He learned to play the piano at the age of four and went on to compose music for local plays as a teenager in the 1950s. “I’ve been composing music all my life. Some of these pieces have lived with me for decades and I still find myself returning to them,” he said.
The new album, which will be published on August 21, includes works that he wrote during different stages of his life, inspired by his childhood, his loved ones, “the cinema that first captivated him,” or his native Wales. As My Fatherland, which he composed, the actor explained, in honor of his “humble” beginnings: “I am the son of my father, the baker.”
In the statement shared by the record label, Hopkins also took the opportunity to dedicate a few words to Dudamel’s baton and his orchestra: “I express my deepest gratitude and respect to Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, whose artistic mastery is an integral part of this musical journey. With the elegant precision of his baton, he transformed each note, giving it a deep and indelible meaning, creating a pictorial landscape that invites the listener to feel and imagine something deeply personal.”
Dudamel also added of Hopkins that he is an “exceptional artist” with a “creative voice that transcends any particular medium.” “The same depth of imagination, humanity and emotional truth that has defined his extraordinary work on stage and screen is present in his music. Listening to his compositions, I am captivated by their beauty, their mastery of craftsmanship and that unmistakable sense of wonder that animates them… Anthony approaches music with the heart of a storyteller and the instinct of a poet, creating sound universes that are, at the same time, deeply personal and of universal resonance,” said the director.
The musical passion of the award-winning actor is not unknown, nor is the first work of this cut that he releases. In 1994 he composed the soundtrack for the film August, his directorial debut. In 2007 he went on a world tour performing his own compositions on the piano, described by experts as “evocative and ethereal”, and in 2014 he released his first classical album, Composerperformed by the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Michael Seal. During the Covid pandemic, the videos he published on his social networks went viral where he played his own compositions live on the piano and answered questions from his followers.