Loert

The composer whose music Middle-Earth evokes the most for me would probably be Arnold Bax: Saruman's plans: For Mordor, however, I'd probably pick another English composer, John Foulds, and the last of his Three Mantras:

Medtner's "Night Wind" Sonata. This piece has the scope of a Dostoevsky novel. It's my dream to be able to play it someday!

1:04 - 1:24 - some of the most intense 20 seconds JW ever wrote!

That's a lot of held beers...

I know they're "just" repeating celeste chords, but the similarity is there!

I don't know anything about that in particular, but here's a video of him playing percussion with Hans: Yep I think he's said he used to listen to and be fascinated by LPs of world percussion music whilst a student at Trinity College.

Yep, while I'm a fan of Svetlanov's "musical sensibilites", the playing in that set can get quite shoddy in places. Clearly some symphonies are more rehearsed than others. For example I think the performance of the 24th is really good, but the 4th...well, the less said the better. But ultimately, as far as I know it is the only complete set of Myaskovsky's symphonies though, so... up to you really! (I do wish another orchestra came round and did another complete set, Myaskovsky certainly deserves it). EDIT: Looks like only symphonies 3, 19 and 22 were recorded during the USSR, the rest were recorded between 1991-3!

Myaskovsky's 6th is amazing, blew my mind when I first heard it. Whichever recording you pick, make sure it has the choir in the last movement (the Jaarvi recording above has it, but I also recommend the live recording conducted by Kondrashin).

I think I posted about this a while ago in another thread, but some sections of Henze's Undine seem to have many stylistic similarities with Star Wars music, particularly the original trilogy. Now, that piece, despite being written in 1958, was only first recorded in 1996, so whether or not Williams could've "plagiarised" it is up for debate, but...here's an excerpt (19:34-19:55): I hear a bit of Death Star, a bit of Imperials motif, even a bit of Rebel Fanfare...they both inhabit the same "musical space".

For piano duet, performed by Shostakovich and Weinberg. Pretty cool!

This absolute belter:

Some more ideas:

Whenever I hear the ending of A.I., I hear the ending of Brahms' Intermezzo in A Major: (...and vice versa )

I think titles like: ...structures... are quite fashionable these days. Or: ...blue pandas, drifting down...