Entirely tangential, but the best album I've heard is Music Inspired by The Lord of the Rings by Bo Hansson. Instrumental progressive rock that, at least for me, entirely evokes a fantasy-like feeling and might even be, dare I say, superior to Howard Shores' score for the films.

Now that I think about it, Tolkien and works related to him seem to have set the bars for a few things - worldbuilding, fantasy literature, epic films, etc.; not to mention more than a few things that have been directly inspired by his works.