Nigel Hess starring Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith. The music has become popular worldwide, and was performed in the film by violinist Joshua Bell with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. While Hess was House Composer for the Royal Shakespeare Company he contributed twenty scores for RSC productions, and highlights from his Shakespeare scores have been recorded and performed by the RPO in concert as "The Food of Love", hosted by Dame Judi Dench and Sir Patrick Stewart. His most recent RSC scores were for Christopher Luscombe's productions of "Love's Labour's Lost" and "Love's Labour's Won". Hess was awarded the New York
Ladies in Lavender in French-speaking Canada. Both Judi Dench and Maggie Smith were nominated for Best European Actress at the European Film Awards. Dench was nominated for the ALFS Award for British Actress of the Year by the London Film Critics Circle. The film was positively received by the critics. In his review in "The New York Times", critic Stephen Holden wrote: [Dench and Smith] sink into their roles as comfortably as house cats burrowing into a down quilt on a windswept, rainy night... This amiably far-fetched film... heralds the return of the Comfy Movie (increasingly rare nowadays), the cinematic equivalent of a