Nino Rota was a prolific composer; someone said when he was young, music poured out of him, and he kept it up for his whole life, writing his masterful Godfather scores in his last decade. In addition to film scores, Rota wrote a good deal of instrumental music and nine operas that are better known in Italy than elsewhere. There is no opera here, but Felix Bender (one item is conducted by Michael Seal) and the WDR Funkhausorchester Koeln offer an excellent sampling of the rest. It may come as a surprise to learn that Rota's association with American cinema predated The Godfather. His splashy score for War and Peace (1956) perfectly complemented King Vidor's lush direction and helped ensure the success of the film despite the ludicrous casting of Henry Fonda as Pierre Bezukhov. The director who most strongly fired Rota's creativity was Federico Fellini, represented here by the lesser-known Orchestra Rehearsal. Sample the "Valzerino" for a taste of how Rota matched Fellini's skewed perspective. There are several fine instrumental pieces as well, none frequently played, even though the Concerto for strings would make an appealing opener for any orchestral concert. As usual with Rota, this work and the horn concerto Castel del Monte and the Harp Concerto are packed with tunes that hang in the mind. The work of the WDR Funkhausorchester Koeln is idiomatically Italian enough and testifies to the deep bench in the world of regional German orchestras. An excellent single-disc taste of the underrated Nino Rota. ~ James Manheim