“Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice announced over speakers, “please welcome world-renowned pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet!”
A roar erupted from hundreds of people dressed in their Regency-inspired finest: tailcoats and dresses with puffed shoulders, costume jewelry and ringlet-curled hair. They crowded around a small Steinway piano to the side of a makeshift stage, whose backdrop was like a billboard: a purple expanse with the image of Keira Knightley in a bonnet and the text “Pride & Prejudice: Twentieth Anniversary.”
It was a Comic Con for the Jane Austen set, an enormous party thrown by Focus Features for one of its most beloved films, Joe Wright’s 2005 adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice.” Inside the Viennese Ballroom at the Langham Huntington in Pasadena, Calif., fans of the movie recently gathered for the rare opportunity to hear Thibaudet perform Dario Marianelli’s soundtrack.
Thibaudet, dressed in custom Vivienne Westwood designed for the occasion, took his seat at the piano and began to play “Dawn,” the tone-setting theme from the start of the film, in which a freely repeating note gives way to an instantly endearing melody over gentle waves of arpeggios. A hush swept through the room, and people held up their phones to record. Two friends held each other and cried; one took a video as the other wiped away her tears.
The soundtrack for “Pride & Prejudice” has the kind of reach that most classical musicians only dream of for their albums. Thibaudet is by any measure a successful pianist: world famous, a master of works by Debussy, Satie and Chopin, with an adventurous streak that has inspired an evening of show tunes with Michael Feinstein and a scent-infused performance of Scriabin. But nothing he does is likely to be as popular as “Pride & Prejudice.”
Released two decades ago by Decca, the soundtrack predates the golden age of music streaming but has accumulated more than a billion streams anyway. Brides have walked down the aisle to “Dawn.” Superfans who watch the film, say, 10 times a year, also listen to the album between screenings; the sight and sound of “Pride & Prejudice,” for many, are one and the same.
“It just says something that has touched people completely,” Thibaudet said in an interview. “There are a lot of beautiful scores, and every time we try to do our best, but once in a while you have something that is magical. Everything is the right ingredient, yet there’s no recipe.”
Laura Monks, a co-president of Decca, wondered whether the popularity of “Dawn” in particular was because of what she called its “hopeful nature.” Joseph Oerke, an executive at the label in the United States, called it “very uncynical” and “easy to connect to.”
For Wright, the director, the goal of the music came down to one word: tenderness. “I really wanted a tender score,” he said in an interview. “I wanted something that felt like youth, tender and beautiful and excitable.”
Marianelli’s writing, he added, has a vulnerability that felt right for the job. The composer sketched ideas for the score, and played them at the piano for Wright, who couldn’t imagine the music transcribed for any other instrument. “It had a perspective,” he said, “like a subjective voice that was Elizabeth’s,” referring to the outspoken heroine, “and indeed Jane Austen’s.”
For the theme of “Dawn,” Marianelli was inspired by Beethoven, whom he saw as a kind of companion to Austen, a fellow revolutionary young artist at the turn of the 19th century. “There was something,” he said, “that has always struck me about the early sonatas — the dissonance getting resolved immediately, the appoggiatura becoming the thematic idea, almost as important as the note itself.” He borrowed a bit from the Third Piano Sonata, but teased out its character with a modern sensibility.
Through Decca, Marianelli was introduced to Thibaudet, who, he said, was “absolutely the perfect man” to record the soundtrack because “I believed every note he played, and we were looking for something honest and true.”
Unusually for a recording session, Thibaudet was encouraged to play with a sense of freedom instead of strict adherence to a click track. Wright was in the studio and directed him as he would an actor. After one take, he brought Thibaudet into a recording booth and said, “Jean-Yves, I need you to play as if you are a young girl,” and the pianist replied, “Yes, I am a young girl.” They continued through different scenarios to get into character: falling in love for the first time, being awed by emotions. It worked.
The “Pride & Prejudice” score went on to receive an Academy Award nomination, though it lost to “Brokeback Mountain.” (Thibaudet, Marianelli and Wright reunited a couple of years later for the “Atonement” soundtrack, which did win.) Still, both the movie and the music endured.
And both have even enjoyed a social media renaissance. Monks, who admitted to watching the movie “at least three times a year,” said that with the rise of period shows like “Bridgerton” and “Regency-core” trends online, “Dawn” has often been used as the audio for posts. Oerke said that it has crossed over to other fandoms as well, “BookTok especially.”
In the years since the soundtrack was released, Thibaudet said, fans have brought it up at nearly every album signing or backstage encounter. “There’s at least one person who will say, ‘This was my first album,’ or ‘This helped me get through college,’” he said. “We really achieved something special.”
He has heard from people, and noticed himself, that listeners tend to come by his other recordings through “Pride & Prejudice.” Even Messiaen, of all composers, has benefited because fans just wanted to hear Thibaudet perform live and that’s what was on offer. Sometimes, those fans are attending a classical music concert for the first time.
That is why he sneaked in some Chopin at his performance at the Pride & Prejudice Ball in Pasadena. No one seemed to mind; people cheered just as much for a Nocturne as for “Dawn.”
The event was a testament to the movie’s hold on its fans. They sprawled throughout the hotel’s property in costume, sitting for sketch artists, dipping confetti cake in fondue and fishing oysters from a towering “Pride & Prejudice” ice sculpture. They carried tote bags decorated with the favorite Mr. Collins line in cursive text: “What excellent boiled potatoes! Many years since I had such an exemplary vegetable.”
After Thibaudet’s performance, people lined up to have him sign newly pressed vinyl copies of the soundtrack. Over the din of the party, he was trying to hear their names; one said “Tiffany, as in the jewelry,” another “Kelsey, as in Kelsey Grammer.” Dozens shared how much the music meant to them. There was a woman who wore her wedding gown because her husband wrote her processional music inspired by “Dawn.” Siblings named Marcella and Melissa told him, “We’re huge fans, we’re sisters, and we like your shoes.” (They were Louboutins.)
Thibaudet was scheduled to meet fans for only 30 minutes. But people kept coming, and he stuck around, undaunted and unbothered, for about an hour and a half, signing albums and posing for photos with a smile.
“I love it,” he said. “I’m so touched by the impact that this score has. Every time I see a person who tells me how much they love it or how much it means to them, I take it as a very, very personal compliment.”
Joshua Barone is the assistant classical music and dance editor on the Culture Desk and a contributing classical music critic.
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