The Woodlanders

Product Details
Audio CD (October 14, 1998)
Original Release Date: October 14, 1998
Number of Discs: 1
Format: Soundtrack
Label: Debonair Records
Condition: Used (Very Good)
Rating: #####
Availability: In Stock
Price: RM28.00


Track Listings
1. Prelude
2. Opening Credits: The Woodlanders
3. The Seed Dance
4. Melbury's Timber Yard
5. Grace Comes Home
6. The Woodland
7. The Party - 'Enrico'
8. Fitzpiers And Miss Melbury
9. Making Cider
10. "Plead For My Own Husband?"
11. Bittersweets
12. Things Unsaid
13. Neither Wife Nor Widow
14. Grace Runs Away
15. "Gone To Work"
16. Getting The Doctor
17. Giles' Death
18. Leaving The Woodland: (End Credits)


In 1995 Virginia Astley was planning to write a musical of the Thomas Hardy story to follow her album "All Shall Be Well".In the end all that survived was a few songs and a title given to her next CD which was originally called "Woodlanders". In other words,yet another unfinished Virginia project. A few copies of the CD with its first title remained in Japan but it was retitled "Had I The Heavens" after the Yeats poem she set to music. By that time film composer George Fenton was working on the score which starred Rufus Sewll and Polly Walker and which came out in 1998. The music is excellent,changing images with every emotion with the era recaptured in its similarity to Vaughan Williams or Elgar, and is performed by an orchestra led by the strings contractor on "Had I The Heavens": Gavin Wright. The first item though is by the Mellstock Band and Singers,of a traditional hymn known as Psalm 128 and who turn up again for a scene called "The Party". Divided into 16 further sections its another perfect soundtrack for Summer Day.


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Wings Of The Dove: Music From The Miramax Motion Picture

Product Details
Audio CD (November 25, 1997)
Original Release Date: November 25, 1997
Number of Discs: 1
Format: Soundtrack
Label: Milan Records
Condition: Used (Very Good)
Rating: #####
Availability: In Stock
Price: RM27.00


Track Listings
1. Underground
2. Rendezvous
3. Social Contract
4. Venice
5. Carnival Masque
6. Tryst
7. Courtship
8. Betrayal
9. The Wings Of the Dove


The soundtrack is one of the better ones you'll hear. Thematically it is similar to the music of the Christopher Reeve/Jane Seymore film Somewhere In Time. The music also sounds as if it hails from the era of French Impressionism. The strings and woodwinds I find achingly beautiful. I am transported everytime I listen to this sound track. Visions of the scenes of Venice from the movie can be revisited when listening to this soundtrack. I loved it more than the movie itself!


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Wilde (Original Soundtrack Recording)

Product Details
Audio CD (September 8, 1997)
Original Release Date: September 8, 1997
Number of Discs: 1
Format: Soundtrack
Label: Sonic Images
Condition: Used (Very Good)
Rating: #####
Availability: In Stock
Price: RM27.00


Track Listings
1. Wilde
2. Wild West
3. I Do Need an Audience
4. Almost as Beautiful as His Mother
5. Nothing Should Reveal the Body But the Body
6. He Loves
7. Gates Thrown Open
8. Love Goes Round
9. I Will Kiss Thy Mouth, Jokanaan
10. Wounds of Love
11. Constant Constance
12. Selfish Giant
13. Mr. Wilde, You Must Go
14. Cast into Outer Darkness
15. Don't Ever Change Your Love
16. What Is the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
17. Angel at My Side
18. Who Has Dared to Wound Thee?
19. De Profundis
20. So Wildly Worshipped, and So Madly Kissed
21. Age of Silver


This is a beautiful CD that perfectly mirrors the artifice and surface beauty of the Victorian age in which Oscar Wilde lived. Yet underneath, there is a current of secretive discord. This album portrays the double-standard of life with majestically orchestrated string pieces and desolate solo pieces arranged for piano and oboe.
The main themes running throughout (the Constance/home life, the Bosie "Ah, Leave Me Not To Pine", the desolation/trial theme) all return intermixed with each other, creating a fantastic panorama of sound.
Ms. Wiseman's work is wonderful, yet towards the end becomes a bit repetitive. However, for any fan of the movie "Wilde," this soundtrack is a must have!


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Washington Square: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Product Details
Audio CD (October 14, 1997)
Original Release Date: October 14, 1997
Number of Discs: 1
Format: Soundtrack
Label: Varese Sarabande
Condition: Used (Very Good)
Rating: #####
Availability: In Stock
Price: RM27.00


Track Listings
1. Washington Square
2. Catherine in the Window
3. Catherine and Morris/Tu Chiami Una Vita
4. First Kiss
5. That Must Be Love
6. Lavinia
7. No to Morris
8. No to Catherine
9. Catherine and the Mirror
10. Catherine's Nocturne
11. Romance Quaartet
12. Please Wait for Me
13. Absence
14. Lavinia and Morris
15. Alps
16. Reunion
17. Unfinished Nocturne
18. Despair
19. Lullaby
20. Father Is Dying
21. Tale of the String
22. Please Don't Come Here Again/Tu Chiami Una Vita
23. End Credits
24. Absence Again


This music, like the movie, was so great, so refreshing and so wonderfully composed I cannot believe it did not get the press recognition it deserved. I shall die before I ever understand why such a great piece of artwork, both the music and film, should go unnoticed, ungraced, and unrespected, while a tacky, plastic, and tasteless film like Titanic should be raved about as it was. This truly indicates the power of film promotion and the guliability of the public.


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Vivaldi: Stabat Mater /Scholl * Ensemble 415 * Banchini

Product Details
Performer: Andreas Scholl
Orchestra: Ensemble 415
Conductor: Chiara Banchini
Composer: Antonio Vivaldi
Audio CD (January 23, 1996)
SPARS Code: DDD
Number of Discs: 1
Format: Import
Label: Harmonia Mundi Fr.
Condition: Used (Like New)
Rating: #####
Availability: In Stock
Price: RM26.00


Track Listings
1. Concerto ripieno, RV 114: Allegro
2. Concerto ripieno, RV 114: Adagio
3. Concerto ripieno, RV 114: Ciaccona
4. Cantate "Cessate, omai cessate", RV 684: Cessate, omai cessate
5. Cantate "Cessate, omai cessate", RV 684: Ah ch'infelice sempre
6. Cantate "Cessate, omai cessate", RV 684: A voi dunque ricorro
7. Cantate "Cessate, omai cessate", RV 684: Nell'orrido albergo ricetto di pene
8. Sonata a quatro "Al Santo Sepolcro", RV 130: Largo molto
9. Sonata a quatro "Al Santo Sepolcro", RV 130: Allegro ma poco andante
10. Introduzione al miserere "Filiae Maestae Jerusalem", RV 638: Filiae maestae Jerusalem
11. Introduzione al miserere "Filiae Maestae Jerusalem", RV 638: Sileant zephyri
12. Introduzione al miserere "Filiae Maestae Jerusalem", RV 638: Sed tenebris diffusis
13. Stabat Mater, RV 621: Stabat Mater dolorosa
14. Stabat Mater, RV 621: Cujus animam gementem
15. Stabat Mater, RV 621: O quam tristis
16. Stabat Mater, RV 621: Quis est homo
17. Stabat Mater, RV 621: Quis non posset
18. Stabat Mater, RV 621: Pro peccatis suae gentis
19. Stabat Mater, RV 621: Eja mater, fons amoris
20. Stabat Mater, RV 621: Fac ut ardeat
21. Stabat Mater, RV 621: Amen


This recording is remarkable. This CD has won a Gramophone award, 4f Telerama, 10 Repertoire, and a Diapason d'Or. It has also made the list of the 50 Best Baroque Recordings (BBC Music). Listen: I'm not even a particular fan of Andreas Scholl, but this is one of my most favorite recordings (in a collection that numbers almost 1,000 CD's). Scholl is uniquely suited to the repertory such as this. His angelic voice may not always rise to the occasion in opera (although his performance in Solomon certainly challenges this assumption), but that same angelic voice is always at home in sacred music - blending calm reverence with a hint of emotion, in a manner that is both beautiful and heart-breaking. Listen to his Stabat Mater to know what I mean. Scholl's voice is also quite at home in the secular cantata Cessate Omai Cessate, a cry of unrequited love, albeit more elegaic than passionate. At the surface, this recording, featuring some of the world's most beautiful melodies, is an easy listening (is there a melody more ravishing than Larghetto from Cessate?). But the listening is also revelatory and rewarding because it leads to new layers of meaning and expression on each new listen.


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The Village [SOUNDTRACK]

Product Details
Composer: James Newton Howard
Audio CD (July 27, 2004)
Number of Discs: 1
Format: Soundtrack
Label: Hollywood Records
Condition: Used (Like New)
Rating: #####
Availability: In Stock
Price: RM24.00


Track Listings
1. Noah Visits
2. What Are You Asking Me?
3. The Bad Color
4. Those We Don't Speak Of
5. Will You Help Me?
6. I Cannot See His Color
7. Rituals
8. The Gravel Road
9. Race To Resting Rock
10. The Forbidden Line
11. The Vote
12. It Is Not Real
13. The Shed Not To Be Used



In the wake of his Sixth Sense triumph, young director M. Night Shyamalan shrewdly marketed himself as a marquee draw, a thriller auteur in the vein of Hitchcock and DePalma. In the process he's also run headlong into one of Hollywood's truest adages: There's no such thing as a sure thing. But while his tale of an isolated hamlet ringed by mysterious, threatening 'others' met with tepid reviews and disappointing box office, it also underscored another filmmaking truism: So-so films can still be blessed with magnificent musical scores. This hauntingly beautiful, yet thoroughly contemporary orchestral soundtrack by James Newton-Howard distinguishes itself at every turn, becoming a clear standout in the ongoing collaboration between the composer and Shyamalan. While similar fusions of minimalist and post-modern musical influences can sometimes seem not much more than hollow intellectual exercises, Newton-Howard inhabits his hypnotic arpeggios and droning rhythms here with an evocative undercurrent of the mysterious and mystical. The composer leans heavily on solo violin to conjure a mock folk tradition of indistinct origins, wedding it to a contemporary classical sense that's as seamless as it is distinguished.


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Van Helsing [ENHANCED] [SOUNDTRACK]

Product Details
Composer: Alan Silvestri
Audio CD (May 4, 2004)
SPARS Code: DDD
Number of Discs: 1
Format: Enhanced, Soundtrack
Label: Decca
Condition: Used (Like New)
Rating: #####
Availability: In Stock
Price: RM24.00


Track Listings
1. Transylvania 1887
2. Burn It Down!
3. Werewolf Trap
4. Journey to Transylvania
5. Attacking Brides
6. Dracula's Nursery
7. Useless Crucifix
8. Transylvanian Horses
9. All Hallow's Eve Ball
10. Who Are They to Judge?
11. Final Battle
12. Reunited
13. [CD-ROM Track]


Bram Stoker's original literary Van Helsing dispatched his nemeses-of-the-night with but a crucifix, a few simple wooden stakes, and a dash of garlic. But this CGI-driven, 21st century Hollywood take on the vampire hunter is bigger, bolder, and, judging from veteran Alan Silvestri's thunderous, goth-on-steroids orchestral score, definitely more bombastic. Courtesy of director/big-budget monster revivalist Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, Mummy Returns, The Scoropin King), Hugh Jackman's title character now faces off against Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, a giant werewolf, and Mr. Hyde. With an appropriate lack of subtlety, Silvestri seasons the action set pieces with some gloomy, Herrmann-esque brass, jolting doses of massed percussion, the occasional shrieking choral homage to Carmina Burana--and (for some ears) precious too little of Franz Waxman's haunting, neo-Romantic horror-film lyricism. But then, overwrought popcorn epics call for overwrought popcorn scores, and the bold, epic scale of Silvestri's music can't be denied; it has as much alternately jolting/nervous energy as a double-dose of caffeine. Enhanced CD features include an interactive game trailer, game playing clues, a photo gallery, and preview of a comic book merchandising tie-in.


Average Customer Review: ####