Movie Themes 2

A slinky, remastered version of the The Pink Panther theme kicks off our second collection of great movie-theme Essentials, and our puce feline friend finds himself in fine company — John Williams delivers his trademark blend of sheer widescreen awesomeness and otherworldly enchantment with the title from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Ennio Morricone expertly mixes gunpowder and spaghetti on A Fistful of Dollars. Discover the great composers behind Hitchcock and Fellini, in Next Steps.

Nino Rota is perhaps best known for his theme for The Godfather, but here we focus on his creative partnership with Federico Fellini, which produced, among other classics, the score for 8 & 1/2. Conductor Elmer Bernstein delivers a couple of brilliantly twisted Bernard Herrmann pieces, written for the Alfred Hitchcock classics North by Northwest and Vertigo, John Barry takes a break from James Bond to investigate the Australian bush with Walkabout, and Ron Goodwin captures wartime suspense in the theme from Where Eagles Dare. Kate Winslet connects Thomas Newman and Nico Muhly in Deep Cuts.

The versatile Hans Zimmer has long been one of Hollywood's A-list soundtrack go-to men, and here we clearly understand why, by setting his rabble-rousing work from Pirates of the Caribbean ("Drink Up Me Hearties Yo Ho") alongside the theme from Rain Man: as commissions go, those two kettles of fish could not be more different, but Zimmer rises brilliantly to the challenge of each. Thomas Newman's work for Revolutionary Road and Nico Muhly's score for The Reader are stand-outs from 2009's Oscar® season.

On the surface, our Movie Themes 2 Essentials playlist appears to be a collection of classic work from timeless film scores — and it is — but it's so much more. For those of you who enjoy unravelling the strands of a densely layered plot, we've woven in a few intriguing twists: for example, Ennio Morricone's work for director Sergio Leone on the Dollars movies brings to mind visions of a gun-slinging Clint Eastwood, who, four decades down the line, turns his compositional hand to the score for Mystic River. James Newton Howard, meanwhile, is the link-man between Defiance and The Dark Knight. Common to every piece of music here is a shared talent for intensifying vision with sound: enjoy.