Ladies in Lavender (violin solo)

Nigel Hess wrote the score for Charles Dance's film Ladies in Lavender in 2004, building it around a violin because the plot turns on a young Polish violinist washed ashore in Cornwall. Joshua Bell played the solo part with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The main theme detached itself from the film almost at once and is now played as a concert piece for violin and orchestra or violin and piano. Hess, who came to film and television from theatre work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, wrote it in a deliberately unmodern idiom, closer to English string writing of the 1930s.