Arabic version: السير أنتوني هوبكنز يوقع مع ديكا كلاسيكس لألبوم جديد

Sir Anthony Hopkins has signed with Decca Classics for a new recording project and will release the album Life Is a Dream on Aug. 21. The record collects original compositions the actor-composer has written over more than six decades.

According to Variety, the album is conducted by Gustavo Dudamel and performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra. The first single, “Bracken Road,” from Hopkins’s “1947: Suite for Solo Piano and Orchestra,” was released Friday. Decca described “Bracken Road” as inspired by childhood memories of Margam, South Wales, and as a nostalgic musical portrait of streets, meadows, farmland and mountains surrounding his family home in the 1940s.

Hopkins, 88, has been playing piano since the age of 4 and began performing Beethoven and Chopin a few years later, the label said. He composed music for local plays as a teenager and has long returned to pieces he wrote over his life. “Music was my first desire, my first wish,” Hopkins said in a statement. He is a self-taught composer who received a Classic Brit Award in 2012 for Album of the Year for his contribution to “And the Waltz Goes On.” He made his live musical performance debut in Saudi Arabia in 2025 with the Life Is a Dream concert played by Britain’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Other pieces on the Decca release include “My Fatherland,” inspired by traditional Welsh melodies, as well as compositions inspired by cinema, his wife and his niece. Hopkins thanked Maestro Gustavo Dudamel and singled out soloists cellist Gregorio Nieto and classical pianist Sergio Tiempo in comments included with the announcement. Decca president Laura Monks said it was a privilege to have Hopkins join Decca Classics and noted the experience of hearing his compositions come to life in London with Dudamel and the Philharmonia Orchestra.