The most eagerly anticipated movie of 1999, if not the decade, The Phantom Menace was also a mouth-watering prospect for soundtrack fans. Star Wars, after all, has become arguably the best-known and most influential movie score ever written, so a new instalment from John Williams, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, was always going to be a cause for celebration. And if the movie proved ultimately unable to live up to audience's almost impossibly high expectations, the music more than compensated. This is Williams at his expansive best. Always a supremely confident inhabitant of the Star Wars universe, the composer once again marshals the techniques of leitmotif and thematic transformation to depict the exotic landscapes of George Lucas's imagination; and here, 22 years after the original, his scoring exudes the maturity of a highly accomplished master of his craft. Take the centrally important "Anakin's Theme", for example, in which the seeds are sown for transformation into "The Imperial March" (Darth Vader's theme), or the Miklós Rózsa-esque march of "The Flag Parade" (the comparison with Ben-Hur is only fitting in context), or the magnificent choral set-piece, "Duel Of The Fates", in which a choir chanting a Sanskrit text (!) is propelled headlong over a driving ostinato rhythm. Original themes are used sparingly, but when the Force theme floats ethereally into "Watto's Deal" or the Emperor's sinister theme introduces "The Appearance Of Darth Maul", their impact is all the more telling for its subtlety. Throughout, the picturesque orchestration conjures vivid images-whether or not you are thinking of the movie-helped greatly by a magnificent performance from the LSO, whose excitement and sense of enjoyment in this music is tangible (the brass playing is, as ever with this team, a joy to behold). The recording at Abbey Road Studio No. 1 is also one of the most realistic ever captured on disc: listen through good speakers and it's like sitting in the studio itself. [+]

Before Broadway was Disneyfied and Times Square became a mall, the best Broadway musicals were being written for Disney animated features by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman. Their songs for The Little Mermaid created the mold from which their even more popular work (Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin) would be cast. Almost every tune in Mermaid has its (slightly inferior) counterpart in Beauty, for example. But there's no topping the Oscar-winning calypso show-stopper, "Under the Sea"-in which a Caribbean crab convinces you that "Darlin' it's better/Down where it's wetter. " Other songs, just as delightful, are even more impressive in the context of the movie. The rapturous "Kiss the Girl" accompanies a scene in which, despite the whispered urgings of creatures all around, the romantic hero does not act on the title's advice! That's the kind of abstract dramatic (OK, comedic) conceit you'd expect from Harold Pinter rather than Disney. And the gruesomely hilarious "Les Poissons" gives us a fisheye view of a kitchen where the seafood chef is a sort of French Ed Gein-a sadistic murderer who brutally tortures and chops up his victims, then eats them! Who says Disney never did black comedy? ". I stuff you with bread/It won't hurt, 'cause you're dead/And you're certainly lucky you are. [+]

An Oscar win might suggest a score would need a miracle to be bettered-but this colourful stage adaptation of Disney's The Lion King does so with flair. Composers Mark Mancina and Lebo M worked closely together to fuse the movie's many disparate elements. Where there was a veritable army exercising creative influences for the animated tale, this brings it all under the wings of a like-minded few. This is genuinely apparent as one track flows into the next. The African rhythms-both vocal and in instrumentation-come across as authentic and original all at once. No doubt this is largely through Mancina's passion for peculiar instruments and the possibilities from nightly live performances. "Grasslands Chant" is a good place to start to hear this. The hit favourites are here of course, but both "Circle Of Life" and "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" are pleasingly unrecognisable with chorus and shifting beats. Better still is the likelihood they will now be eclipsed by some of the new numbers. Mancina's own "He Lives In You" being a strong contender. [+]