Sir Anthony Hopkins has released his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” featuring 12 compositions crafted over six decades
NEW YORK — It may be hard to believe, but even Sir Anthony Hopkins doubts himself sometimes.
“There’s a part of me which says, ‘you didn’t write that,’” he recalls of composing his debut album, “Life Is a Dream." "What’s it called? Impostor syndrome."
Thankfully, it did not stop him from finishing the collection of 12 compositions he crafted over six decades.
Conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra and recorded at London's Alexandra Palace in April, it will be released by Decca Records on Aug. 21.
“My first love, or vocation really, is music,” said the 88-year-old actor. “That sounds very official, but I was raised with a lot of music (of the) postwar years, and it influenced me. And I started playing the piano when I was quite young.”
He picked up the instrument at 4 and began composing years later, writing his first piece, a waltz, in 1960. He was 22 at the time.
“I find more freedom with music,” he says, compared to acting, which he labels “a discipline, you have to know your stuff. But music for me is a freewheeling kind of art form.”
And he's had his fair share of experience. Prior to the release of “Life Is a Dream,” Hopkins had composed scores for a number of films.
“The opening of ‘Shadowlands’ is my first adventure in composing music,” he said, referring to the 1993 film he starred in as “The Chronicles of Narnia” author C.S. Lewis. Then he became the principal composer on a few other movies that he also starred in and directed, including 1996's “August" and 2007's “Slipstream." 2020’s “Elyse.”
“It's about my childhood,” he says of the album, which shares its title with the Pedro Calderón de la Barca play. “It's basically the memories of my childhood and growing up in Wales, and my developments in life, my adolescent years," and so on.
But he says "there’s a great sadness in it all because — don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a wonderful life — but underneath it all, there is the knowledge that life is one long goodbye. From the moment we’re born, we begin to die,” he starts to laugh. “Sounds so cheerful!”
That tension — or better put, wisdom — carries throughout the release. Take the first single as an example. “1947: Suite for Solo Piano and Orchestra: ll. Bracken Road” is the middle composition in a three-part suite about a particular summer in South Wales. He says it contains a “melancholy and sadness,” a sense that arises with its cello.
“It’s the welcomed sound of nostalgia, of the strange, whimsical pain of life,” he describes the song. “All music is actually based in pain. Sounds pretty preposterous, but it is. It’s about the yearning.”
The same can be said about the song “Stella Aria" — named after his wife, director and actor Stella Hopkins — that deals with “the loneliness in all of us,” he says, but is part of a path to "sheer happiness.”
