While Wendy Carlos achieved international renown for her electronic Bach realizations, she maintains that her major creative breakthrough occurred via her score for Stanley Kubrick’s controversial 1972 film A Clockwork Orange. In addition to arranging and adapting music by Beethoven (the Ninth Symphony), Rossini (his overtures to La Gazza Ladra and William Tell), and Purcell (Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary), Carlos weaved evocative soundscapes of original music around the disturbing on-screen events. The extended Timesteps, in particular, holds its own when heard removed from its visual context, and so do shorter themes like “Biblical Daydreams”, “Orange Minuet”, and the twistedly poignant “Country Lane”. Film music buffs will welcome this long-out-of-print soundtrack’s first appearance on CD, carefully restored from the original master tapes.
