Miramax Records/Hollywood Records has released the original motion picture soundtrack for Emma, the romantic comedy starring Gwyneth Paltrow and featuring the melodic orchestral score by noted composer Rachel Portman. The 1996 Miramax film marks the directorial debut of screenwriter Douglas McGrath, who co-wrote the Academy Award®-nominated screenplay for Bullets Over Broadway with Woody Allen, and who, for Emma, adapted Jane Austen's 1816 satirical novel for the screen.

Composer Rachel Portman has broken new film-scoring ground in Hollywood, not only as the leader of a new wave of women composers, but as a musician with an innate understanding of her character's emotions. Whether it's the starstruck romance of Only You, the quirky humor of Benny and Joon, the tears of The Joy Luck Club, or the classical mischief of Emma, Portman is particularly adept at writing music for the human condition. In addition to these credits, Portman has provided the scores for such films as Sirens, Ethan Frome, To Wong Foo, The War of the Buttons, Antonia and Jane, and Wayne Wang's Smoke.

Portman's first scores were composed for the acclaimed shorts by filmmakers Michael Leigh and Beeban Kidron. Kidron's "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" (for the BBC) brought Portman her second Best Score nomination from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts; her first BAFTA nod honored her television score for "The Woman in Black," directed by Herbert Wise. After winning the British Film Institute's Young Composer of the Year Award in 1988, Portman composed the classical symphonic score of Where Angels Fear to Tread, which earned a nomination for the Anthony Asquith Award for Outstanding Film Music.

Emma stars Paltrow as Emma Woodhouse -- pretty, clever, and just a little self-satisfied -- who lives in style with her widowed father in the small English town of Highbury. When her beloved governess, friend, and confidante leaves to marry, Emma is faced with a great gap in her life -- and a great dilemma: how to help others lead a life as perfect as her own. She turns to matchmaking, leaving her subjects the task of unraveling the tangled triangle in quite an unexpected fashion. David Ansen of Newsweek called Emma "a remarkable achievment for first-time writer-director Douglas McGrath."