Lisa King

Emerging as a great pop vocal stylist in 1954, Nat King Cole enjoyed a string of hit singles and albums thereon, but Unforgettable is perhaps the singer at his early peak. With romance as the watchword, Cole slides through some of his most familiar ballads, include the title selection, "Portrait of Jennie," "Mona Lisa," and "I Love You (For Sentimental Reasons)." There are quite a few lesser known, but attractive songs, plus a small handful of standards ("What'll I Do?" is a keeper) that round out this interesting collection. The very artistic, near surreal three-dimensional white, charcoal black, and royal blue-hued front cover may be the best part of this reissue, as it reflects a time period defined by its simplicity and yet its increasingly technological, superimposed modernity.

Scarcely three decades old, the enduring appeal of novelist Stephen King's horror oeuvre has already begun to foster remakes of the films and TV productions already based on his most popular works. This cable TV redux of King's 1975 tale of a small hamlet beset by vampires features an ominous, brooding orchestral and choral score that's a winning collaboration between newcomer Christopher Gordon and former Dead Can Dance mainstay cum film scorer Lisa Gerrard. The gothic seasoning she imparted to her previous collaborations with Hans Zimmer (most notably Gladiator) comes to the forefront on this score's haunting title aria (composed by Gerrard and partner Patrick Cassidy) and tracks like "Bloody Pirates" and "Free in Spirit." But it's the music of newcomer Gordon (Master and Commander) whose sheer scale and ambition belie the small screen format it was written for at nearly every turn.

With various record labels compiling complete works to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the death of Bach, EMI's more accessible approach is this luxurious anthology of the Baroque master's sacred music. Over two and a half hours, this program encompasses the grand scale of the Magnificat in D (BWV 243) and Missa Brevis in A (BWV 234). Between these are scared cantatas, the very popular choral Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (BWV 140) contrasting with sensitive solo vocal writing in Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (BWV 12); motets; arias; and an organ prelude and fugue. It's a well-balanced program, covering every aspect of Bach's church music except the Passions.

You'll find no stereotypical Biblical characters in The Occasional Oratorio; there are no characters at all. This work is nothing but a blood- and-glory martial celebration Handel hastily threw together to raise London's spirits in a crisis. (The "occasion" was the English counterattack against Bonnie Prince Charlie's rebellion.) Handel composed almost no original music for this work, instead lifting choice bits from Judas Maccabeus, Comus, Athalia, Israel in Egypt–he even closes the work with Zadok the Priest! Handel aficionados will have great fun picking out which numbers originated where. In fact, pretty much everyone will have fun listening to this music (gloriously performed by Robert King and his regulars); it is–as it were–a blast.

For all the resurgence in interest in Nat King Cole since 1991, when his daughter Natalie recorded a duet patching her new vocal with his from 40 years earlier and scored a gold-selling hit, Capitol Records lacked a single-disc hits collection that covered Cole's most successful singles for the label. This 22-track, 62-plus minute CD/cassette collection does the trick…