There is little to no doubt that Hans Zimmer is one of the greatest musical minds of our recent times. His work has enhanced movies tenfold and is known to bring significant emotion and depth with complex arrangements and incredibly professional musicianship. Here, you can see the magic of his arrangements for yourself as we take a look at his live performance in Prague in 2017, where he performed “Time” from the movie Inception.
Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2010. While it was certainly a mind-bending and exhilarating hit, its soundtrack also had a significant impact on how enjoyable the movie was. Zimmer wanted to create a deep, electronic, and dense score that was laden with sadness and nostalgia to complement the mood of the film’s plot. It must have been an incredible experience to witness it live. Watch the clip below:
It is not just Hans Zimmer who deserves credit. The multitude of musicians that he has at his disposal helps create this emotional cacophony that is more intense in concert than it is in the film itself. While the clip begins with Zimmer, the stage gradually lights up to reveal a large symphony behind him which gradually builds in intensity. “Time”’s hurrah is a swell of musicality that would shed a tear on the most hardened of souls, but that is exactly what Zimmer is best known for.
Hans Zimmer is one of the world’s best-known composers and arrangers, and his work has been present in some of the biggest and best movies ever created. One of his most acclaimed works is the soundtrack for 2014’s Interstellar, a highly emotional and captivating movie about an astronaut (Matthew McConaughey) and a team of scientists who travel through a wormhole to find a way to save humanity. Its plot and execution are spectacular, with its soundtrack driving a lot of the emotion in the movie.
If you have seen any blockbuster or high-grossing movie over the last 20 years, there is a very high chance that you have heard some of Hans Zimmer’s work. He has collaborated with a plethora of directors in the film industry to create truly breathtaking scores that remain unforgettable to most audiences. Some of his best-known works include The Lion King (1994) and Dune (2021), both of which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Score.
Most would expect that, with such accolades as these, Hans Zimmer would have had extensive formal training from a young age to understand and execute composing so well, but this is not entirely true. In a Reddit AMA, he was asked about his training, to which he replied, “My formal training was two weeks of piano lessons. I was thrown out of eight schools. But I joined a band. I am self-taught. But I’ve always heard music in my head. And I’m a child of the 20th century; computers came in very handy.”