City of Prague Philharmonic

I love the idea behind this and many of the selections, especially The Tin Drum, the suites from Fellini's La Dolce Vita and Amarcord and Kieslowski's luminous The Double Life of Veronique. Then there's also the predictable inclusion of foreign film Oscar fodder like Il Postino and Cinema Paradiso. But there are a number of gorgeous scores that have the life choked out of them by the deathly serious treatment given them by the Prague Philharmonic. It doesn't even turn them into muzak, but into something drearily, self-consciously worthy that robs the Nino Rota's Fellini scores, in particular, of their lightsome wistfulness and barely contained sense of fun.