Adam Glaser

Beyond the Stars
Music of Film and Imagination

Program Notes by Adam Glaser 

The Juilliard Pre-College Orchestra
Adam Glaser, conductor
Saturday, May 23, 2026
Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Lincoln Center, New York

Program:
Erich Korngold: Captain Blood Overture
Michael Abels: Global Warming
John Williams: “Adventures on Earth” from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Richard Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra

Like celluloid spooling through a film projector, there is a clear thread running through today’s concert, Beyond the Stars: Music of Film and Imagination.  All four works were written by iconic film composers: Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Michael Abels, John Williams, and ... Richard Strauss.

Wait a minute. Richard Strauss? The German composer who never set foot in Hollywood? Why is he a part of this illustrious group? It’s a fair question. After all, most people don’t think of Strauss as a composer of movie music. Or, if they do, it is likely due to one iconic scene in the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which director Stanley Kubrick famously placed the opening “Sunrise” fanfare from Strauss’ symphonic poem, Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), front and center. That alone might be enough reason to justify including Strauss in the lexicon of movie tunesmiths, but there is much more to it.

A giant of post-Romantic program music in the first half of the 20th century, Richard Strauss elevated the symphonic poem, a musical form Franz Liszt established in the mid-19th century, to astounding new heights. A symphonic poem illustrates a story using only music, without any text or visual aid. To accomplish this, a composer needs a fertile imagination, a rich palette of orchestral colors, and impeccable composition technique. Strauss possessed and harnessed these gifts in the service of constructing ambitious dramatic narratives out of exclusively musical materials—without a word of dialogue or explanation—yielding such masterworks as Don Juan, Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), and Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks).

Also sprach Zarathustra is unusually ambitious in scope, aiming to both tell a story and tackle deep philosophical questions. Described as a “tone poem freely after Nietzsche,” the work explores the struggle between nature and humanity examined in Friedrich Nietzche’s 1885 eponymous philosophical novel. In addition to his vividly colorful painting, Strauss spins a web of musical motives intended to represent such abstract concepts as Longing, Disgust, Faith, and Dread, and brazenly juxtaposes key areas to dramatize thorny existential conflicts (C Major as nature vs. B Major as humanity). The work is a creative tour de force, generously stocked with thick chromatic harmonies, sophisticated counterpoint, virtuosic thematic transformation, and Strauss’ highly expressive orchestral vocabulary. Such credentials were ideal for the sweeping spectacles and swashbuckling adventures that Hollywood movie studios were churning out in the 1930s and ’40s. Could Strauss have had a successful career in Hollywood? Alas, we’ll never know, but his impact on orchestral composers to follow—including and especially those working in the nascent film industry—would be far-reaching and profound. 

This brings us to another talented composer from Vienna, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a Jewish child prodigy considered a “genius” by Gustav Mahler and admired by many others, including Strauss himself. Although he was already a respected and established composer, Korngold’s introduction to Hollywood would both redefine his career trajectory and save his life. In 1934, film and theater director Max Reinhardt, one of Korngold’s collaborators, invited him to adapt Mendelssohn’s incidental music for the Warner Brothers film version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Thrilled with Korngold’s work, the studio contracted him to write music for several more movies, including Captain Blood, prompting him to shuttle between Vienna and Hollywood for the next three years. In 1938, with the Nazi regime gaining power in Europe, Korngold was invited to score The Adventures of Robin Hood and seized the opportunity to relocate with his family to Los Angeles, where he would continue to compose film scores and beloved concert works for the rest of his life. Korngold’s lush orchestration and heroic melodies helped to establish the sweeping Hollywood style that would inspire later composers, sometimes even at the granular level. For instance, listen to the opening theme of Korngold’s score for 1942’s Kings Row and see if it bears an “empire-striking” resemblance to the opening theme of a certain 1977 movie titled Star Wars.

And that, of course, brings us forward in time to the late 20th century and the rise of film composer John Williams. By the early 1980s, already having demonstrated his infinite affinity for galactic infinities (and beyond!), Williams composed the score for another space-inspired movie, Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, creating one of the most endearing and enduring stories in cinema history. Like Strauss and Korngold, Williams has a toolbox of techniques that’s expansive and bottomless. With stunning melodies, deft motivic development, and superb orchestration, Williams alchemizes a grieving young boy’s bond with a homesick alien into one of Hollywood’s most stirring scores of all time, with a famous “flying theme” that would redefine the perception of bicycles for a generation.

With a striking blend of compositional acumen and genre-defying imagination, Michael Abels has been composing evocative, highly sophisticated works for more than 30 years. But it is during this last decade, following his collaboration with award-winning director Jordan Peele on 2016’s Get Out, that moviegoers have truly discovered the talent of this incredibly compelling composer. Like Korngold’s, Abels’ achievements in the concert hall preceded his success in Hollywood. In 1990, just after the Berlin Wall’s collapse, Abels fulfilled a commission from the Phoenix Symphony to write Global Warming, a brilliant work that illuminates the planet’s melting ice caps, melting tensions at the end of the Cold War, and the “melting pot” of immigrant cultures in his Los Angeles neighborhood. Abels’ gift for musical storytelling is evident in the first bar; his use of open intervals and stark orchestration evoking a sweltering desert heat, replete with the sound of buzzing cicadas. With intricate counterpoint, he seamlessly weaves an Irish folk tune with a Middle Eastern melody, creating what he calls a “a noisy yet harmonious world village.” Abels’ compositional voice is so advanced and his technique so masterly that he can turn up the thermostat, celebrate global events, and tackle an existential crisis, all without uttering a word of dialogue.

This brings us back to Strauss, a highly influential figure who might have enjoyed knowing the heights to which his musical descendants have soared over the last century. Examining the celluloid thread that runs through these four compositions, we are reminded how much we all share with our musical ancestors and how fortunate we are to speak this magical, universal language. After all, with music, you can express so much …without saying anything at all.

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