FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Paul McCartney
Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart)
Live Performance And Documentary To Be Released On DVD

U.S Street Date: February 26th, 2008

In September 2006 Paul McCartney released his fourth full-length classical
album, Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart). On Friday November 3rd, 2007 Ecce Cor
Meum was given its world premiere performance to a sold out audience at The
Royal Albert Hall, London. In May of this year Paul was presented with the
award for Best Album at the UK Classical Brit Awards. The special world
premiere Royal Albert Hall performance is to be made available for the first
time ever on DVD, along with a documentary tracking the journey and making of
this album. The DVD will be released in the U.S. through EMI Classics on
February 26th, 2008.

Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart) was performed by Kate Royal (soprano); Academy
of St Martin In The Fields Orchestra; London Voices; Boys Of Magdalen College
Choir, Oxford and Boys of King's College Choir, Cambridge. They were conducted
by Gavin Greenaway. This is the same cast that appears on the studio
recording.

The DVD also follows the story of Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart). It includes
exclusive interviews with Paul and behind the scenes footage of the recording of
the album at Abbey Road and the preparation in the run up to The Albert Hall
performance. The album was more than eight years in the making and its origins
follow in the historic tradition of composers that have been commissioned to
write music for the world-renowned Magdalen College Oxford. Paul was specially
invited by Anthony Smith (President of Magdalen College 1998 - 2005) to compose
something to set the seal on a new concert hall for the college. His hope was
for 'a choral piece which could be sung by young people the world over, in the
same way that Handel's Messiah is'.

In November 2001, the first version of Ecce Cor Meum was given its preview
performance by the Magdalen College Choir, which was conducted by Bill Ives at
the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. This was a great learning experience for Paul.
"Eventually I made it all come together through correcting a lot of
misapprehensions - a lot was learned before the Sheldonian performance, but a
lot of it was learned afterwards. An experienced choral composer knows that
children can't be given huge sustained passages; they don't have the energy and
the stamina. At the Sheldonian there was some quite hard stuff that I didn't
realise because I'd done it on the synthesiser (which has endless stamina!), but
during that first performance the solo treble couldn't come on for the second
half - I think I'd used him up in the first half! These are things that people
either learn because they are taught them immediately at the first lesson, or
you learn through the years, so it was good to go through the piece a lot of
times, and we took out huge choral sections and gave them to the orchestra. If
it had been a Beatles song I would have known how to do it. But this was a
completely different ball game."

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