PR: Paul McCartney "Ecce Cor Meum" DVD

[cinemediapromo]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Paul McCartney
Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart)
Live Performance And Documentary To Be Released On DVD

U.S Street Date: February 26th, 2008

In September 2006 Paul McCartney released his fourth full-length
classical album, Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart). On Friday November
3rd, 2007 Ecce Cor Meum was given its world premiere performance to a
sold out audience at The Royal Albert Hall, London. In May of this
year Paul was presented with the award for Best Album at the UK
Classical Brit Awards. The special world premiere Royal Albert Hall
performance is to be made available for the first time ever on DVD,
along with a documentary tracking the journey and making of this
album. The DVD will be released in the U.S. through EMI Classics on
February 26th, 2008.

Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart) was performed by Kate Royal (soprano);
Academy of St Martin In The Fields Orchestra; London Voices; Boys Of
Magdalen College Choir, Oxford and Boys of King's College Choir,
Cambridge. They were conducted by Gavin Greenaway. This is the same
cast that appears on the studio recording.

The DVD also follows the story of Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart). It
includes exclusive interviews with Paul and behind the scenes footage
of the recording of the album at Abbey Road and the preparation in the
run up to The Albert Hall performance. The album was more than eight
years in the making and its origins follow in the historic tradition
of composers that have been commissioned to write music for the world-
renowned Magdalen College Oxford. Paul was specially invited by
Anthony Smith (President of Magdalen College 1998 - 2005) to compose
something to set the seal on a new concert hall for the college. His
hope was for 'a choral piece which could be sung by young people the
world over, in the same way that Handel's Messiah is'.

In November 2001, the first version of Ecce Cor Meum was given its
preview performance by the Magdalen College Choir, which was conducted
by Bill Ives at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. This was a great
learning experience for Paul. "Eventually I made it all come together
through correcting a lot of misapprehensions - a lot was learned
before the Sheldonian performance, but a lot of it was learned
afterwards. An experienced choral composer knows that children can't
be given huge sustained passages; they don't have the energy and the
stamina. At the Sheldonian there was some quite hard stuff that I
didn't realise because I'd done it on the synthesiser (which has
endless stamina!), but during that first performance the solo treble
couldn't come on for the second half - I think I'd used him up in the
first half! These are things that people either learn because they
are taught them immediately at the first lesson, or you learn through
the years, so it was good to go through the piece a lot of times, and
we took out huge choral sections and gave them to the orchestra. If
it had been a Beatles song I would have known how to do it. But this
was a completely different ball game."

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