If you can stand it, here are two of my favorites

Heart of Courage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRLdhFVzqt4

Victory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHjFIwbvzo8

These two are, I think, uplifting and inspiring.

MarsGal thanks for posting this. The operative phrase here is

Quote from: MarsGal on September 06, 2017, 07:12:02 AM
If you can stand it,

To me it is strident and overpowering and perhaps would better be appreciated if it were accompanied with a visual sampling of the movie for which it is the background. I have several recordings in this genre that require a little context in order to appreciate them better.

Angel I'm quite taken by the vision of your teacher going from one class to another with her phono player in tow. I'm sure that even if no lesson accompanied the music everyone absorbed by osmosis a smattering of some form of music appreciation.

Here is a piece that so many of you commented on in the past. It's from the one-act opera In The Well by Vilem Blodek and is entitled The Rising Of The Moon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjkmJJ9TLyg

Yes, Don. You definitely need to be in the mood to listen to more than a piece or two of Two Steps from Hell. My sister also pointed out that the music is somewhat repetitious, but she probably never notices that original movie music themes tend towards that.

I was surprised, when I just checked IMDB, to see that the only listing for the group is the 2014 title music for the Rugby League: Challenge Cup. Their website lists a number of movie credits as well as trailers including the latest remakes, Ben-Hur and Mad Max.

Right! Back to classical interests and speaking of strident.

Wagner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGU1P6lBW6Q

Bizet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4U7wNZu-CU

I always thought of the term strident as something forceful, like some works of Wagner and Tchaikovsky, some opera pieces, etc. Examples above. However, the definition includes screechy, discordant, raspy, grating. Well, I'd have to name some Mahler bits there.

Well, I just run across one of my childhood favorites: Franz von Suppé : Light Cavalry - Overture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF5nhMIyeqI

Don I am with you about that music, I must be old fashioned, but it was too thumping on my ears.

After that, even the Rising of the Moon could not be enjoyed.

Franz von Suppé : Light Cavalry was also one of my childhood favorites.  Thank you for finding it MarsGal.

Don, I am sure there was some sort of lesson involved because as a second grader I learned the stories behind the music. However, what I remember to this day is that I could literally hear the words and the gestures and movements in the story from the music. What a large and enjoyable realization to a seven-year-old!

Angel, remember Peter and the Wolf? I wonder if this is one of Leonard Bernstein's Young Peoples' Concert series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9AnkErkCfU

I had a 45rpm with the story of Diana and the Golden Apples using Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije Suite for the background.  And here it is, oh my. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GUzJ7fQBtg Instant second childhood here.

Angel, I love the Peer Gynt Suite, but am ignorant of the story!   I really should research that.

Aviv has a CD of Peter and the Wolf with music in Hebrew.  It is strange to hear that after being used to another language.

Peter and the Wolf was one of my stories from the little Golden Books, (Remember those?); so hearing the music was so much for me as a young child. Peer Gynt was what I thought of after reading Rip Van Wrinkle later on. If I remember correctly, he had a family and left them, traveling, only to return many, many years later to find his children grown. I will have to research that to see if my memory is right.

MarsGal, the first part of your Youtube video reminded me of what that long ago teacher explained for Peter and the Wolf. This was back in 1958 when we only had the radio.

I have to say I was really mistaken in my memory of Peer Gynt!?! However, I'm sure my second-grade music teacher in the fifties either didn't know the full story or it was romanticised for young ears. Here is what I found;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_Gynt

Thank you Angel.  What a complicated plot that PG is! 
I don't think I would want to see a production of it, it is just too enjoyable to follow the music and just add imagination.

Bubble, the Mountain King and the very long time away certainly resemble Rip Van Wrinkle. Or perhaps it is the other way around? Now that I'm thinking about it, the shiftlessness and procrastination of Peer Gynt strikes a chord or memory so I'm sure my teacher said something but I know she wasn't telling the whole story to second graders!

I also don't think the story would have been a favorite if I had read that as a child. But the music is beautiful.

All those childhood favorites--most of them still favorites.  Bob particularly liked Peter and the Wolf, because he played clarinet in high school orchestra, and got to play the cat.

Actors seem to love doing the voice for Peter. Peter Ustinov was particularly good.  Once I tuned in halfway through a version with a very impressive, elegant, cultured female voice.  Turned out to be Eleanor Roosevelt!

I think one of the most impressive works involving the spoken word by actors and other celebrities is Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait.
Dozens of celebrities have recorded this work, of which my two favourites are Katherine Hepburn and Henry Fonda.  This    is Hepburn's version,, but try and sample as many as you can; it is moving and inspirational.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCFYsyLAljE

Hepburn was an actress of great elegance and class, an excellent choice for this.  No matter how many thousands of times I read or hear that bit of the Gettysburg Address, it still brings tears to my eyes.  Maybe I'm just an old softie.

If I'd stayed in Portland a week longer (just got back) I could have heard George Takei do it with the first-class Oregon Symphony

There are three actresses I greatly admire. One is Kate Hepburn and the others are Meryl Streep and Dame Judi Dench. And a lot of that respect is how they live their lives off-screen.

Today is the birthday of Henry Purcell, or at least an educated guess as to when he was born; no one knows for sure.  He served in the royal courts and one of the ways he could ingratiate himself was to compose birthday odes for the royalty. This one was for Queen Mary: Come Ye Sons Of Art.
https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-mozilla-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=mozilla&p=purcell+come+ye+sons+of+art+youtube#id=82&vid=c2d4078480c6fc4e5ea703d279e0e57c&action=view

Marsgal, I kind of like Two Steps from Hell.  Did you notice that "High Cs" ended with a whiff of The Firebird?  It starts at 4:49.

Here's the Stravinsky, conducted by the composer.  The theme starts at 9:56.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrMGqAmjbug

Not a fan of Firebird, so no, I didn't notice Pat. I am kind of surprised that Pirates of the Caribbean isn't among their movie credits. That is exactly what I thing of when I hear it. They include Cloud Atlas, Ender's Game, Interstellar, The Help, Avatar and Wall-E among their movie credits.

Dvorak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZTeavJ9frA  Nice and relaxing, Romance for piano and violin, Op.11

Marsgal, you're right there's a problem with the repetitiveness necessary for a movie background not being good for solo listening.  I was listening to Strength of a Thousand Men (it shows up as a link on some of the clips you posted) when something struck a chord.  Here's a 1938 prototype.  The rhythm is there, starting at 1:29.  It doesn't last very long before we get off into good old Russian patriotism, but it comes back from time to time.

Alexander Nevsky, music by Sergei Prokofieff--the battle on the ice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyDKezDLGTM

By the way, those are the bad guys in the picture--the evil Swedish knights trying to conquer Novgorod.

Good ear, PatH. I haven't heard "Battle on the Ice" for a while now. Prokofiev sure does well protraying the clash of weapons and the rush of battle. The real battle must have been something to behold. I first read about it in William Urban's book "The Teutonic Knights". It was a major loss for the Teutonic Knights during their Northern Crusade which was directed at pagans and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

I generally read some of the comments below and noticed this one from Steve J.

QuoteListening to this makes me genuinely sad that Prokofiev wasn't around to make movie soundtracks for more modern movies.

I just discovered a book on Amazon that I may order. https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Russias-Epics-Chronicles-Tales/dp/0452010861 which includes an early account of the battle.

There's a lot of good movie music kicking around.  Does anyone else have favorites?

It's been years since I heard Alexander Nevsky so I sat down yesterday and gave it my undivided attention.
Shostakovich has many soundtrack works to his credit which I often played on my show. Of course he had a good start in that genre because he used to play the piano at the cinema where they screened silent movies, so he certainly knew how to capture the moment in his music.
A memorable treat for me is the soundtrack music from Gone With The Wind   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra6ShThMnGk

It's a been a long, long while since I've heard Exodus. It has a tendency to choke me up on hearing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsmZeo1Tc9A

Does the same for me. Such Touching Music. Been years since I watched it. Just ordered it again at the Library.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y75RYb92gts

Time for another quiz to test your skill and knowledge. As usual limit yourself to two correct answers for now.

1: Which composer was known as the Velvet Gentleman?

2:This opera featured a stocking weaver, a furrier and a cobbler.

3: What opera shares the same name as a gentleman’s hat?

4: In terms of attire what do all of these operatic characters have in common: Cherubino in Mozart’s Marriage Of Figaro, Count Ory in Rossini’s Comte Ory and Octavian in Strauss’ opera Der Rosenkavalier

5: Which composer started designing his own clothes such as jackets, togas and leggings. And for his girlfriend Karren he designed what may be the first version of a sports bra.

6: Name the work and composer from which this  excerpt was taken. https://www.normalesup.org/~glafon/musique/Quizzmp3/extrait01.mp3

#5 was Percy Grainger who was in my mind, totally nuts. I know this because I subscribe to Atlas Obscura.com which is all about the oddities of life.

#6 is Bizet's L'Arlesienne.