More music my shuffle button dug up for me on vacation, kind-of-classical edition:

Prokofiev – Piano Concerto No. 3, first movement

Prokofiev is for taking 90 degree turns into dimensions you didn’t know existed.

Alex North – Main Title from the 1965 movie The Agony and the Ecstasy

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Every time I hear this soundtrack there’s a book I want to read while listening.  I’m not sure what book it is, because I haven’t found it yet.  I’ll know it when I find it.

Michael Nyman – The Masque, from the 1991 movie Prospero’s Books

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Nyman has a repetitive, trance-inducing style that, when it’s bad, is really boring, but when it’s good, when he gets it right, it just goes on and on and on, flowering in new directions all the time, and it seems impossible that it hasn’t ended yet.  How can this go on for twelve minutes?!

Alan Silvestri – Beowulf Slays the Beast, from the 2006 movie Beowulf

I used to wonder where all the classical composers had gone, but then I realized they went to Hollywood.  Classical music split in two.  The fine arts crowd kept the pretensions and the integrity, but all the emotions, all the rousing epic scores, which had been part of classical music and opera from the beginning, that went to the movies.  Some people can’t stand this sort of music, and, some times, neither can I, but, look, if you can’t add an epic soundtrack to your life once in a while, what kind of boring person are you?