This essentially is a box containing two CDs also available
separately. No doubt there is a price advantage but you will need to
check that for yourself and you will only be able to do that if you
go to one of the UK's National Trust shops or possibly at their
website (I have not verified that). I also noticed it in a branch of
W H Smiths in Runcorn in the UK at £13.99.
The two discs are entitled 'Contemporary Moods' and
'Classical Moods'. The first is principally film music administered
a s a romantic soporific. The second is a selection of romantic classical
'moments'.
What there is here is mostly well done. On the classical
disc William Boughton's ESO/Nimbus Minuet is a delight (tr 5).
The Winter 2nd movement played by Anthony Marwood goes well.
Mark Ermler's Panorama from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty
benefits from Ermler's stage-craft and theatrical roots. The violinist
in the second movement of Brahms violin concerto is not identified.
I presume it is Oistrakh or Francescatti ... but which?
Among the film music the orchestral tracks are drained
from the Silver Screen catalogue. Everything is a shade glutinous but
the stronger tracks are John Barry's John Dunbar theme, When
the Snow Melts (Cunningham/Lunny - I presume that is Donal Lunny
of Capercaillie fame?), Willow Tree by Fracois Ovide, the cimbalom-haunted
music of Gabriel Yared for The English patient and two Delian
tracks by Anthony Phillips.
The compilation is from the BMG and Silva Screen vaults.
Attractive of its kind though the first CD should have
been more open-handedly stacked.
Rob Barnett
licensed from Silver
Screen, Conifer, Nimbus, BMG, HNH International, Arte Nova, Windham
Hill