Happy birthday, Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995)!

Can you spare ten minutes to soak up some Golden Age greatness? Check out this wonderful medley of some of his classic film scores.

I had a blast picking out the films without looking at the images. I own recordings of all of them, of course.

One of my personal favorites, not in the medley, is “Lust for Life” (1956), in which Kirk Douglas plays Vincent Van Gogh. The composer softens up the edges of his brawny Hungarian sound by dipping into the hazy palette of the French Impressionists.

In a similar mold is this concert work, “The Vintner’s Daughter,” twelve variations inspired by a poem by Juste Olivier, in which a maiden drifts off to sleep in the sun at harvest time and dreams of the arrival of three Hungarian knights. Originally composed for piano in 1953, it was orchestrated two years later at the request of Eugene Ormandy.

The original piano version

For orchestra

Rózsa conducts the Pittsburgh Symphony in his most celebrated music, for “Ben-Hur” (1959)

Jascha Heifetz plays the Violin Concerto (1953; subsequently adapted for use in the 1970 film “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes”)

They just don’t make ‘em like Miklós anymore.

PHOTOS: Rózsa and (top to bottom) “Ben-Hur,” “Lust for Life,” and preparing the Violin Concerto with Jascha Heifetz and Walter Hendl