Nixon

This dark brooding soundtrack for the Oliver Stone film is certainly not the most exciting Williams score ever. The main theme is a great propulsive theme for brass with a synth backing, although it starts suspiciously like The Imperial March, but the similarity is only superficial. It comes to the fore in the opening track, mainly and once in while in later tracks. There is also a more wistful theme for trumpet that occurs once in a while. Even so, the rest of the score is just dark brooding music that doesn't really sustain the interest that much. Track 9 has some more exciting stuff, with the more usual Williams brassy fanfares, but otherwise it's a bit dreary really. I haven't seen the film, and I imagine it goes quite well in context, but alone doesn't really pull it off. The sort of score I would happily not have bought if only I had the main theme (Track 1) on a compilation CD, alas, this does not yet exist.