James Horner’s lyrical and elegiac score for Iris matches the film’s sensitive and sentimental portrayal of a woman succumbing to Alzheimer’s disease. Horner creates a sort of extended serenade with the solo violin featured prominently throughout. The music is primarily pastoral in mood and occasionally brings to mind Copland and Vaughan Williams (as well as Horner’s elder film colleagues John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith). There are only a few passages of any real tension (such as the scene depicting Iris’ first symptoms), and the one truly dramatic sequence is in Part 6, where Iris’ husband desperately searches for his missing wife. But it doesn’t really matter whether you’ve seen the film, as Horner’s atmospheric and gently relaxing score functions quite nicely as mood music.
Joshua Bell, in yet another soundtrack assignment (he had the “title role” in John Corigliano’s score for The Red Violin) plays with much affection, tenderness, and beauty of tone. He’s ably supported by the composer conducting an unnamed yet top-notch studio orchestra. The sound quality is surprisingly near that of a regular classical orchestral recording. Certainly soundtrack albums have come a long way since the ’70s and ’80s, when you had to put up with listening to great scores such as Star Wars, Superman, Close Encounters, Alien, and E.T. in wretched sound on crummy LPs.
