Music from 'The Hours'

"When I recorded the original soundtrack in London, I often felt completely carried away and thought, as I watched playback with him at the recording sessions, not only that the music complemented the movie superbly, but also that it could stand alone and would make a wonderful album. The film went on to critical and public acclaim, earning a number of Academy Award nominations including "Best Original Score" and winning the "Best Actress" award for Nicole Kidman.

And the soundtrack album, released on Nonesuch, was also very well received and generated additional interest in the score as concert music. As a result of this interest, I arranged a suite in the form of a three movement piano concerto, and premiered this work with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andreas Delfs, and have performed it subsequently with the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the Eos Orchestra.

Furthermore, Paramount Music, the publisher, desired to issue a book of arrangements for solo piano, geared for intermediate players. Originally, I assigned the task of producing these arrangements to my assistant, Nice Muhly, but as I started thinking about it, the idea of performing and recording these arrangements became more and more appealing to me, and I ended up taking the lead role in their development.

These arrangements appeared in a volume which consists of eleven of the fourteen tracks on the soundtrack album. I subsequently arranged the remaining three tracks for the present CD, which thus contains all of the material on the original soundtrack album. The arrangements on this CD follow the published edition except for the first track, The Poet Acts, which is a new and more complex version with four against three in the right hand."
- Michael Riesman