Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Classical Music - Sunday 3 May 2015, 9pm

Catherine Bott takes us back to the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood film music.

On this week's show Catherine Bott turns the spotlight on some of the great composers who began life in Europe but went on to make their names as composers for film scores during the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood.

Max Steiner, referred to as the 'Father of Film Music', was a Viennese prodigy who studied with Brahms and Mahler, and had Richard Strauss as a godfather. His pioneering music from King Kong, which we hear tonight, acted as a landmark of film scoring.

Mahler described the young Erich Wolfgang Korngold as a ‘musical genius’. His thrilling, romantic scores are still hugely influential today with composers such as John Williams. Then there’s music from Ben Hur by Miklos Rozsa, and examples from Franz Wazman, Dmitri Tiomkin and Bronislau Kaper.

Finally, coming closer to the present day, Catherine has something haunting from Wojciech Kilar, the Polish composer who scored Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula.