The Best of Ennio Morricone

It’s over fifty years ago that legendary film music composer, Ennio Morricone, was immortalised with his haunting soundtrack to Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti western: "Once upon a Time in the West". Gaining an Oscar for his film score to Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful 8" in 2016, he nowadays rarely performs in public. Following his 2019 Farewell Tour, the 90-year-old will no longer play live again. The signature harmonica of "Once upon a Time in the West" is globally renowned. During the nail-biting opening scene, where the three villains lie in wait for Charles Bronson at the station, Morricone captures the audience as he plays with sparse sound effects and long pauses. His music interplays with sound effects drops of water, buzzing flies and train whistles against a visual backdrop of telegraph poles and country windmills. Almost nothing happens for ten long minutes, as the tension builds. The familiar sound of the mournful harmonica brings a welcome sense of relief. In his over forty years of composing soundtracks, the former graduate trumpet player has written some 500 scores for both cinema and television. Ever since the mid-1990s, Morricone’s creative output has been about 15 film soundtracks per year. Among his most important works are "The Hateful 8", "Play Me the Song of Death", "Django Unchained", "Kill Bill 2", "My Name Is Nobody", "Two Glorious Rascals", "Once upon a Time in America", "For a Handful of Dollars", "The Incorruptible". Morricone’s soundtrack to "Two Glorious Scoundrels" comes second on the list of 200 best film scores of all time.