Album: Nicola Benedetti The Silver Violin (Decca)

Nicola Benedetti believes that film music is the primary contemporary conduit for classical or orchestral music.

This is is not the same thing as the primary conduit for contemporary classical music, with only the likes of Roeg and Kubrick daring to step outside the kind of lush emotional ballast provided by the film pieces collected here, which shrink the distance between Shostakovich, Williams and Korngold. The latter's Violin Concerto, built around his Oscar-winning score for Anthony Adverse, is the centrepiece. But the most interesting pieces are Gardel's playful tango from Scent Of A Woman, "Por Una Cabeza", and excerpts from Howard Shore's score to Eastern Promises, the most adventurous work here. 

Download: Eastern Promises; Por Una Cabeza; Violin Concerto