This is James Horner's most original score. Song one is the best, it effectively uses vocals, piano, and orchestra to create a tear jerkingly beautifull main theme.

Song one just prepares you for what you are about to experience. After that, just enjoy the ride, it is an awesome experience.

While not one of James Horner's best, this sixty-nine-minute piece of work certainly outdoes his prior endeavor with director Ron Howard, Apollo 13. For myself, I think it's a vast exertion of the piano and a way for miracle-worker Horner (composer/conductor of Braveheart and Titanic) to show his worth.

Unlike many modern-day composers, Horner isn't afraid of simplicity. With men like John Williams, Nick Glennie-Smith and Hans Zimmer, all of their individual work has to be tainted with some kind of supplementary leap for extravagance. It's not that I have a problem with any luxurious cracks for advanced music, but I respect ones who can commit themselves to both sorts.
For example, take John Williams' The Patriot: now, it would have been a lot better if only he hadn't taken things so far. His violin interlude and broad main themes were luminous, but then he made far too many Star Wars, Jurassic Park and Home Alone connotations through the middle tracks, that the score became a little too redundant. I have no trouble with marking your own work, but someone must draw the line at a number of points and carry out a more exclusive subsistence.

Regardless, Horner has made known - to me, at least - real talent with generating such indisputably proportionate work without any major continual themes; sure, there is the main one, but it's straightforward as much as it is intuitive, and I always find it to be a grand listen every time.

A sure must for James Horner aficionados.

Despite the title of this review, this soundtrack shares none of John Nash's traits aside from brilliance.

James Horner's score is at once exciting, dramatic, haunting, dark, and beautiful. The tracks will cause a vast range of emotion to swell within you and all will keep you listening. The classical themes are very well composed, each using the instruments given to truly elaborate what feeling is meant to be displayed in the piece.

Some tracks are intruiging or moving in a simple way, making a slow pace through the piece. Some of these tend to seem repetitive or similar, but listening closely will reveal simply a similar theme in widely different tracks.

Others can be downright inspiring. While dark and brooding, "Nash Descends into Parcher's World" is very heartfelt, with deep instruments pulling along the shadowed dread of what's to come, and produces a villianous feel in a film that really has no villain. It's this negative flow that actually surges the piece forward, making it one stand out, and at the same time, flow right along with the rest of the track, despite the differences.

And unlike many movie scores, this one is able to pull itself alone without needed the recollection of the film or having scene the movie previously to truly enjoy all the scores.

By far, the most brilliant piece on this soundtrack and the one I listen to most frequently is the theme and first piece on the CD, "Kaleidoscope of Mathematics." The easy pipe and string that starts, along with the quickening piano that are all exhulted by Charlotte Church's incredible and beautiful singing. This is an amazing piece through and through, and it's probably one of the best tracks for a movie I've ever heard.

"A Beautiful Mind" is yet another incredible soundtrack by James Horner, and one that is proof of why movie soundtracks are needed as much without the movie as they are within.

-Escushion