Premiere: The opening theme for 'A Most Wanted Man'

Herbert Grönemeyer, Germany's top-selling rock musician, not only appears in the new spy thriller A Most Wanted Man, he wrote the film's score.

Grönemeyer's opening theme for director Anton Corbijn's latest film, based on a John Le Carré novel, premieres at Paste BN. The movie, which features the late Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his final onscreen roles, opens July 25. A Most Wanted Man: A Motion Picture Soundtrack comes out July 29.

Grönemeyer, who who starred in the 1981 German film Das Boot and also scored Corbijn's 2010 film The American, plays piano and keyboard throughout the film. He recorded the orchestral arrangements at London's Abbey Road Studio and the rest of the music at Hansa Studio in Berlin.

"The challenge for me was to provide a pulse and a hidden beat to the movie that features all those wonderful actors, such as Philip Seymour Hoffman, Nina Hoss, Willem Dafoe, Daniel Brühl and Rachel McAdams," Grönemeyer says. "This is the second time that Alex Silva and I have produced the music to one of Anton's movies. To me the lyrics are the movie and the director is the lyricist. It's been a lot of fun and I believe the music will manage to serve its purpose – at least sometimes."