Largely overshadowed by The Shawshank Redemption, Thomas Newman’s other Academy Award-nominated score from 1994, Little Women nevertheless remains one of the finest efforts of the composer’s career, its unsentimental pastoral beauty vividly evoking Louisa May Alcott’s indelible frontier world. Employing period instruments including piano, flute and strings, Little Women boasts a homespun charm that wonderfully complements Newman’s warm, lilting melodies — perhaps the most telling tribute one can pay this music is that the original compositions fit interchangeably with the soundtrack’s public domain entries from Francis Johnson, Claudio Grafulla and Conrad Kocher, capturing the sound and spirit of early Americana to perfection. – Jason Ankeny