CD 1 begins with two short selections from Max Steiner's King Kong, the Main title and A Boat in the Fog, Erich W. Korngold is represented by three musical clips from The Adventures of Robin Hood, Hans Salter's House of Frankenstein, Adolph Deutsch's The Maltese Falcon and so on. Aaron Copland's The Red Pony Suite and Leonard Bernstein's On the Waterfront are just two more famous composers on the list while John Williams is represented by Schindler's List and Star Wars. This, essentially, is a CD devoted to Hollywood movies. There is a total selection of 23 tracks on this CD for a total length of 78:52 minutes.

CD 2 offers 26 tracks starting with Eric Coates' Dam Busters March and ending with an extract from Wojciech Kilar's music for Bram Stoker's Dracula. In between there is William Walton's The Ghost from Hamlet, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Prelude to 49^th Parallel, Sergey Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite, and Jacques Ibert's Chanson de la morte from Don Quichotte and the Overture from Macbeth, to mention a few. The titles of the films reveal that they are of an international nature, with the first eight dedicated to British-made films. The total running time of this CD is 78:48 min.

Just how to describe this music is a challenge. These are not tracks from the movies, but suites created by the composers to give their film scores a longer life span. Such suites may or may not reflect what is happening in the original film, but they offer a reminder of it while also creating a more satisfying experience for the listener than a direct sound track snippet. At the same time, these short pieces provide a nostalgic reminder of some of the listeners' favorite movies, or challenge them to guess what it is they recognize if they don't take the time to follow the track list in the 164-page booklet written by John Riley.

This booklet is a gem in that it offers a well-written look at the history and purpose of cinematic music. Riley also included a Timeline of the history of movie music making starting in 1885, a year that saw the birth of a number of musicians. Strangely enough, he lists only two, Herbert Stothart and Alban Berg, the latter as far as I know never composed a film score although he composed two operas. Stothart, of course was nominated for nine Oscars and won for his background music for The Wizard of Oz, though this score is not represented in this collection of film music. In addition, Riley provided a glossary of music and recording terms used within the film production process.

Going back to how to describe this music, it fits neither the classical nor the pop idiom, but is an amalgam of both. My choice for listing this collection under Pop Music has nothing to do with the quality of the compositions, but with the idea that cinema is a popular art and hence, its music, fits into that description. At the same time, the tracks are generally no longer than popular songs, though none have lyrics, to justify the classification as popular music.

As for the production values of these CDs, the sound quality of some of the tracks is not quite as good as may be desirable, but this compilation is not to be sneezed at. One has to be a pretty fussy listener to worry about this aspect of the two CDs.