John Williams: The Berlin Concert

Movie score albums don’t get much classier, or more thrillingly played, than this. John Williams made his Berlin Philharmonic debut in October 2021, at the age of 89, with an orchestra that plays at white heat. Many of the great Williams scores are here, but highlights must be the perky “Nimbus 2000” from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, played by the Berlin Philharmonic’s winds, the helter-skelter “Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra”—written for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade—and the deeply moving “Elegy for Cello and Orchestra,” memorializing two children, performed by principal cellist Bruno Delepelaire.