Listening to the Olympic Fanfare and Theme conducted by a spritely 89-year-old man, you’d be forgiven for wondering who the real sportsman is. A top athlete or this valiant conductor? For the first time in his life, John Williams conducted the Berliner Philharmoniker. The concert began with the theme Williams composed for the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. Perusing the Berlin Concert programme, you’ll notice that it’s not just this epic piece that centres on self-esteem, unwavering effort and innate talent. In fact, many of the soundtracks Williams has composed focus on the very same ideas. Whether he’s working on films depicting the magical gifts of a young orphan (Harry Potter and the Philosophy’s Stone) or a superhero with superhuman strength (Superman), it seems the exceptional longevity of the American musician’s glistening career could be the subject of a film for which he himself would compose the soundtrack. Other works – which Williams rarely plays in concert – also handle topics such as overcoming your demons: Far and Away’s novelistic and spirited soundtrack accompanies the trials of two Irish men on their quest to achieve their American dream. Meanwhile, the modern and atonal music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind sheds a strange light on the faith of a handful of men who believe in an otherworldly civilisation. Of course, this album also includes John Williams’ greatest hits, from the heroic Indiana Jones soundtrack to the Imperial March from Star Wars and the lyrical melodies from E.T. and Jurassic Park. With this guest conductor, the Berliner Philharmoniker adds colour to its palette. The result? Music that’s inspiring, exciting and well-received. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

After Fish's departure, Marillion teetered on the brink of collapse: The frontman's distinct voice and poetic prose made him the defining member of the band. One can only imagine how record executives held their collective breath as Steve Hogarth was brought in to take the reins. His first outing with band, 1989's Season's End, removed all doubts about the band's future. Hogarth's unique, expressive voice fit Marillion perfectly; on the full-throttle rock assault of "The Uninvited Guest" or the emotional "After You," Hogarth's singularity is unmistakable. The heartfelt "Easter," with its imaginative electric-acoustic arrangement, is another showcase for Hogarth's talents. Marillion's ability to write music whose ideals live and breathe in the listener continues on Seasons End, particularly on the inspiring "Holloway Girl," which dissects the injustice of incarcerating mentally ill female inmates (at England's Holloway Prison) instead of placing them in appropriate psychiatric facilities. The beautiful "Easter" is the band's plea for peace in Ireland, while "The King of Sunset Town" has its lyrical roots in the massacre at Tiananmen Square. Hogarth's flexible range and beautiful phrasing shine on the entire album. In 1999 Marillion released a remastered version of Seasons End, including a bonus disc of outtakes and alternate versions as well as the previously unreleased "The Bell in the Sea" and "The Release." Both are strong tracks and are welcome additions to the Marillion catalog. While 1995's Afraid of Sunlight is the peak of Marillion's growing, impressive body of work, Season's End shouldn't be missed either.© Jeri Montesano /TiVo

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Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s music never ceases to amaze us, thanks to its constant inventiveness and the harmonic discoveries that are as innovative as they are at times incongruous. Berlin’s Akademie für Alte Musik graces us with this selection of seven symphonies composed at the end of the Baroque period for the musical scenes of Berlin and Hamburg. C.P.E. Bach, much like his colleague Haydn who so admired him, is one of the pioneers, one of the trailblazers of this new style of music derived from the Baroque sonata. C.P.E. Bach approaches music, first and foremost, with a sensitivity that follows the precepts of German empfindsamkeit (“sentimentalism”), which resisted the French rationalism of Enlightenment thinkers from 1715 onwards. The composer reached the peak of his renown upon composing his symphonies with such unsurpassed ease and consummate artfulness. We know nothing of the circumstances surrounding these creations, which were probably played in the court or royal salons. One can only admire their excellence, as is evidenced by, for example, the “Symphony in E Minor,” which achieved wide recognition thanks to its solemnity, which made a considerable impression on its first listeners. This exquisite program ends with the body of symphonic works written by Bach’s son for the famous baron Gottfried van Swieten, to whom music owes a great deal, as he inspired not only Carl Philipp Emanuel, but also Haydn and Mozart. © François Hudry/Qobuz

In the early '20s, Franz Schreker was one of the best-known composers in the world. His music was suppressed by the Nazis because he was Jewish, and due to the High Modernism of the postwar period, a second totalitarianism, his reputation did not recover. This was a shame, for Schreker was anything but a conservative, and it is good to see that he is finally getting his due. What he needed at this point was a high-profile recording with top soloists, and that is exactly what he gets here from Christoph Eschenbach and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, with soprano Chen Reiss and baritone Matthias Goerne. Deutsche Grammophon's PR text refers to "Schreker's sumptuous, hyper-Romantic music," but this is not quite right. Schreker could sometimes be that, as in the Romantische Suite that closes the album, but Straussian late Romanticism was only one of his influences. In terms of using tone color as a structural element, Schreker was in every way a contemporary of Schoenberg (his close friend) and Webern. Eschenbach's generous selection of orchestral songs here provides a good way to appreciate this quality; sample Die Dunkelheit sinkt schwer wie Blei from the Fünf Gesänge, with its mysterious strumming-like sounds. The text of that song is from a German translation of the Thousand and One Nights anthology, and Reiss sounds great in the Zwei lyrische Gesänge to texts (in German) by, of all people, Walt Whitman. Schreker could be neoclassic (in the economical Kleine Suite); he could be Impressionist-tinged; he mastered a full Expressionist idiom in the opera that gives the album its title, represented here by a substantial instrumental excerpt. This double-album release conveys the breadth of Schreker's musical language, but he is never blankly eclectic. A wonderful album that will help to rewrite the 20th century canon.© James Manheim /TiVo

This collection brings together some of the best moments of Ludovico Einaudi's work for film and television. Cinema includes his pieces for the 2021 Oscar- and BAFTA-winning movies Nomadland and The Father, alongside compositions from This Is England, Insidious, and Doctor Foster. The previously unreleased theme to The Water Diviner is also featured.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

One album to their name and already they’re releasing a live album? That’s right – Parcels, aka Australia’s coolest quintet and Daft Punk’s protégé’s, released their debut album just a year and a half ago. This new release features over an hour of music recorded live on tape in the legendary Hansa Studios in Berlin, where some of the greatest musicians have recorded albums, including David Bowie (Low and Heroes), Iggy Pop (Lust For Life), U2 (Achtung Baby), the Pixies (Bossanova) and all the albums from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds whilst they were based in Berlin. On their first album, Parcels, Jules Crommelin (guitar), Patrick Hetherington (keyboards), Louie Swain (keyboards), Noah Hill (bass) and Anatole ‘Toto’ Serret (drums) unveiled their simple and sincere passion for jamming out. The hedonistic musicians fuse effortlessly and their passion for playing together is accentuated even further in this second album Live Vol.1 due to its unconventional setting, its versions often similar to the originals. The band’s influences range from Steely Dan and Chic’s funk to The Beatles’ pop basics and The Beach Boys’ vocal harmonies. Their live studio set was also filmed, as the band explains: “This video was already being planned two years ago before we’d even started making our first record. A lush 24 track tape recording of all the album songs being performed in a classic studio. Did I hear you’re interested in experiencing some more bells and whistles? Well I’m sorry, there’s none to be found here. For us two years ago, this idea was the perfect bookend to the debut album. Surprisingly it still feels like a good idea now, which never really happens unless it’s the right thing to do. You might not get much out of intently watching it through start to finish. Rather treat it like a private house concert to soundtrack your dinner preparations, with no pressure to applaud, no hiked up beer prices and the sweet option to pause for a bathroom break without missing the best bit. The performance isn’t edited in any way, just mixed, mistakes and all, so we’re concentrating hard in the video on making it sound nice. There’s a lot of nervous eye communication, a little bit of polite dancing and occasionally moments of just enjoying being right in the zone together. We’re stoked with how it turned out.” © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

One of the leading figures on the German electronic music scene, Paul Kalkbrenner both scored and starred in this comedy-drama about a DJ and producer who is poised to break through to international fame when he ends up in a mental hospital after a trip to the emergency room while tripping on club drugs. The Original Soundtrack album for Berlin Calling includes a handful of new tracks from Kalkbrenner as well as contributions from Sascha Funke.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Buoyancy, elegance, crisp rhythmics, precise articulation, bristling timbres… All modes of description that I’m likely to have at some point used to outline the strengths of a Bach Brandenburgs release, when not only do new recordings of this famous Köthen-composed set appear with a steady regularity, but when there’s also a consistency to both the performance standards, and the performance style and decisions that you’ll hear across especially the more recent offerings. Not because Historically Informed Performance ensembles have no imagination, but because Bach was in fact incredibly precise about what he wanted, meaning very little has been left to the imagination. Also because Baroque performances these days are all able to draw on the received wisdom of what is now decades of HIP scholarship and practice. All that said, this new offering from the Akademie fűr Alte Musik Berlin under its concertmasters Georg Kallweit and Bernhard Forck, feels different. For starters it’s different to the ensemble’s earlier Brandenburgs recording, which now is almost twenty-five years old. Partly this is down to tools, when a quarter of a century ago the instrument-making world hadn’t quite caught up with period performance no longer being a niche enterprise, meaning fewer high-class period copies to be found, and thus more mediocre instruments sitting in the world’s baroque bands. Then it’s also partly due to a change in the continuo department, because this time there’s no double bass – a reflection of the belief that, at time of composition, the “violone grosso” was yet to arrive in Köthen. Yet it’s not just a matter of lighter continuo textures or an orchestra of top-drawer instruments. Or even of the range of light and shade the orchestra are bringing to their colouring. More, it’s the sense of joyous intimacy and excitement radiating from absolutely everyone, combined with the sheer effortless of the virtuosity you’re hearing at every fresh turn. No doubt this is due in no small part to the presence of the ensemble’s longtime collaborator, violinist Isabelle Faust, and its recent new collaborator violist Antoine Tamestit; because while theirs are hardly “prima donna” star turns (after all, these are democratic, multi-instrument concertos, and Faust and Tamestit have correspondingly submerged themselves into the ensemble), it’s also true that Faust’s solo pyrotechnics in No. 4, and her lovely interplay with the recorders, had me wanting to rewind; and that No. 6 for two violas, two gambas and obligato cello is especially ringing with tonal beauty and sprightly vim. What’s more, the aforementioned lack of double bass has yielded a concluding Allegro for No. 6 that stands as one of the set’s absolute highlights: notably warmly climactic and uplifting, but equally notably light of tread and transparent of texture in a way that’s strikingly, surprisingly successful. Worth emphasising also is that the sense of occasion is by no means limited to where Faust and Tamestit have their solo turns. For instance, I can’t remember having ever been so captivated by the tonal beauty and shaping of the harpsichord’s virtuosities in No. 5’s opening Allegro as I am here by Raphael Alpermann’s glittering figures. In short, don’t hesitate. This is superb from start to finish. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

Alphaville's 1984 debut, Forever Young, deserves to be viewed as a classic synth pop album. There's no doubting that Germans are behind the crystalline Teutonic textures and massive beats that permeate the album, but vocalist Marian Gold's impressive ability to handle a Bryan Ferry croon and many impassioned high passages meant the album would have worldwide appeal. Indeed both "Big in Japan" and the touching, sad change-of-pace "Forever Young" raced up the charts in multiple continents. Borrowing inspiration from Roxy Music's detached theatricality and Kraftwerk's beats and rhythms, Gold and company hit upon a magic formula that produced here an album's worth of impossibly catchy tunes that could almost serve as pure definitions for the synth pop genre. The hits race straight for one's cranium and embed themselves upon impact. "Big in Japan" feels like a more serious cousin to Murray Head's "One Night in Bangkok," as a slow-pounding beat spars with Gold's desperate voice. "Forever Young," a stark, epic song that would become essential for every post-1984 high school graduation, drips sadness and never fails to cause a listener to nostalgically reflect on life and loss. Outside of these hits, the remainder of the songs rarely falter, mixing emotion, theater, and of course electronics into a potent, addictive wave of synth euphoria. It's likely every fan could pick his own favorite of the other should-have-been-hits, but "Fallen Angel" deserves special mention. It begins with spooky, funny warbling and icy keyboards, and then explodes and transforms into a startling, romantic epiphany at the chorus. If its lyrics are a bit goofy or juvenile, it only adds to the heartfelt love the song expresses. Alphaville stick firmly to their synths and sequencers on Forever Young, but they keep things interesting by incorporating motifs from funk, Broadway, Brazilian jazz, and even hip-hop. Even when the band takes itself too seriously, the songs' catchy drive and consistently smart production cover any thematic holes. Forever Young is a technically perfect and emotionally compelling slice of 1980s electronic pop/rock music. It's also a wonderfully fun ride from start to finish.© Tim DiGravina /TiVo

In a little more than a decade, Vampire Weekend has taken it slow. After the eponymous Vampire Weekend (2008), Contra (2010) and Modern Vampires of the City (2013), Ezra Koenig’s band took a six-year break punctuated by the departure of the very influential Rostam Batmanglij who released an excellent solo record Half-Light in 2017. Their last album to date, Modern Vampires of the City, was a distinctive evolution in the works of the New York combo. The Talking Heads influence had been abandoned for a more refined and polished pop sound, found as much in the melodies and harmonies as in its style.Koenig, now the main creative force left in the group, has left New York and relocated to LA. Father of the Bride confirms his artistic ambition. His central style remains inherently pop, but each of the 18 songs in the album offer a different outlook. There is a bit of everything in this copious record; The Beatles, Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp, Paul Simon, Wilco, Grateful Dead and hundreds of other influences can be noted. The collaborators on the album are equally diverse: the pedal steel and impressionist guitars of Greg Leisz, the voice of Danielle Haim of HAIM, the guitar of Dave Longstreth of the Dirty Projectors, Steve Lacy of the Internet and even Rostam enters the fold on two titles. While listening to the record, one might ask themselves if Ezra Koenig has made a White Album (the most eclectic album by the Beatles) all by himself… © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

In 1962, Ella Fitzgerald was at the height of her powers, about midway through recording her now-iconic series of "songbook" albums and, two years earlier, having released a barnstormer of a live album, Ella in Berlin, that solidified her position as one of the most talented and popular musicians working in the jazz idiom. Her only competition at the time was, essentially, Frank Sinatra and herself. During the course of 1962, she would release three albums: two complementary collaborations with Nelson Riddle that further pushed her into crossover territory without tarnishing her credibility or minimizing her skills, and the oft-overlooked Rhythm is My Business, a hard-swinging set that comes off breezy and soulful, but is a remarkable document of the strength of Fitzgerald and her band during this era. And it's that strength that's captured on The Lost Berlin Tapes, recorded in concert at Berlin’s Sportpalast that year. Verve Records founder Norman Granz frequently recorded live sets of many of his acts (Fitzgerald especially), and that's what accounts for both the existence and the remarkable fidelity of these "lost" tapes. (Though they were never truly lost; Granz had just stashed them away). From a performance perspective, it's unbelievable that this concert recording sat unheard for more than a half-century. Brimming with energy and benefiting from the confidence that can only come from being at the top of one's game, Ella and her band careen through 17 songs with a full-throated fervor that's greeted with an equally enthusiastic response from the crowd. The set both swings incredibly hard and evinces a cool, sophisticated polish, a combination that, again, pretty much only she and Sinatra were delivering at this scale during the era. It's the sort of casual excellence that's made to look deceptively easy. (And yes, she aces the version of "Mack the Knife" here.) Releases like this—especially in the aftermath of the devastating Universal fire that destroyed so many iconic album masters and so much unreleased material—prove that, even when we think a barrel has been fully scraped or a vault fully excavated, there will always be warm, welcome surprises to be found in the archives of these legendary artists. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz