Overview
- Decca Classics announced that Sir Anthony Hopkins has signed to release Life Is a Dream, a 12-track album collecting original compositions he wrote over more than six decades.
- The album was recorded at Alexandra Palace in London in April with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and features soloists cellist Gregorio Nieto and pianist Sergio Tiempo.
- The first single, 'Bracken Road,' was released Friday and is drawn from Hopkins’s 1947: Suite for Solo Piano and Orchestra, inspired by his childhood memories of Margam, South Wales.
- Hopkins has said music was his 'first desire' and that many pieces on the record reflect his Welsh upbringing, including a track titled 'My Fatherland' written to honor his roots.
- Decca and Dudamel framed the project as a serious classical collaboration rather than a celebrity crossover, and the release on August 21 will be the label’s main vehicle to promote Hopkins’s work to classical audiences.