Heist 88

It is not the easiest task to combine compassion and creepiness into one musical piece, but Danny Elfman has demonstrated, quite elegantly, just how to do it. Edward Scissorhands is quite considerably his masterpiece, instantly recognizable and hauntingly memorable. The concept of a man-made creation, a recluse who has been left with scissors for hands because his inventor died just before attaching natural ones, is certainly strange and possibly laughable. The film may indeed have played as pure farce if not for Elfman's artistry. While many films use soundtrack as the "glue" of the story, or as border, Elfman saturates every bit of Scissorhands so that it is as much his art as it is the director's (Tim Burton)…

Only some twenty works out of what was originally a far greater number of secular cantatas have survived in performable condition. They nevertheless offer a welcome complement to our image of Bach the church musician, and reveal a composer who approached secular music with the same artistic integrity and demand for quality that we find in his sacred music.

Richard Wagner was one of the most revolutionary figures in the history of music, a composer who made pivotal contributions to the development of harmony and musical drama that reverberate even today. Indeed, though Wagner occasionally produced successful music written on a relatively modest scale, opera – the bigger, the better – was clearly his milieu, and his aesthetic is perhaps the most grandiose that Western music has ever known. Early in his career, Wagner learned both the elements and the practical, political realities of his craft by writing a handful of operas which were unenthusiastically, even angrily, received. © Rovi Staff /TiVo

Newly remastered onto 12 CD's and in wonderful, refreshed sound for this 2013 release in honor of Wagner's 200th birthday, this cycle, recorded live in Bayreuth during 1966 and 1967, remains one of the greatest "Rings" on record. Legendary singers Theo Adam as Wotan, James King as Siegmund, Leonie Rysanek as Sieglinde, Thomas Stewart as Gunther, Wolfgang Windgassen as Siegfried, and Birgit Nilsson as Brühnnhilde lead an outstanding cast in this fast-moving and dramatic reading led by expert conductor Karl Böhm.