CINEMATIC STRINGS: AN ODE TO THE SILVER SCREEN

Cinematic Strings: An Ode to the Silver Screen
Iconic film scores come to life through piano and strings
This program brings together unforgettable themes, and virtuosic chamber works that shaped the sound of cinema.
You’ll instantly recognize Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, famously featured in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and long associated with classic Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry cartoons, where it underscored fast-paced comedy and animated chaos. One of cinema’s most enduring love themes follows in Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Variation 18), memorably heard in Somewhere in Time, Groundhog Day, and Sabrina.
The emotional centerpiece features music from Schindler’s List, whose haunting violin theme remains one of the most powerful and recognizable scores in film history. The evening concludes with a sweeping piano quintet by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, an early-20th-century Academy Award–winning composer whose lush symphonic language became the foundation of Hollywood’s classic film scores.
Program Preview
Johannes Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 5
(1833-1897)
Sergei Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Variation 18)
(1873-1943)
John Williams Schindler’s List
(b. 1932)
Johannes Brahms Waltz in A-flat Major, Op. 39, No. 15
Franz Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor
(1811-1886)
INTERMISSION
Erich Wolfgang Korngold Piano Quintet in E Major, Op. 15
(1897-1957)