From the time he burst onto the scene in 2003 with his enchanting score for Girl with a Pearl Earring, Paris-based composer Alexandre Desplat collaborated with many of the leading directors in America, Great Britain, and the Continent. He has won two Oscars (and earned nine additional nominations), three BAFTAs, three Césars, two Golden Globes, and a pair of Grammy Awards.

Some of the directors who have relied on his special talents include Ang Lee (Lust, Caution), Ben Affleck (Argo), Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life), Greta Gerwig (Little Women), Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty), Roman Polanski (The Ghost Writer), and George Clooney (The Monuments Men)—along with numerous others, represented on the program.

He has done six films with British director Stephen Frears, starting with The Queen (2006), for which he wrote, in his words, “music of grandeur and elegance, but also wit,” as the film charted the delicate relationship between Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) and Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) in the days after the death of Princess Diana. Their most recent film was The Lost King (2022), about an amateur historian (Sally Hawkins) seeking the remains of King Richard III; Desplat’s score carefully straddled two time periods: the 15th century, featuring medieval lute, recorders, and organ; and modern times, with symphony orchestra providing the mystery.

For director David Fincher, he scored The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), an adaptation of an obscure F. Scott Fitzgerald story about a man (Brad Pitt) who ages in reverse and the complications that result when he falls in love with a 30-year-old woman. Despite the epic nature of the film, the music is delicate and chamber-like.

The composer provided a sensitive and touching musical backdrop, frequently featuring piano, for Tom Hooper’s historical drama The King’s Speech (2010), about England’s King George VI (Colin Firth) overcoming his stammer with the help of a patient speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush). The film won a Best Picture Oscar, and Desplat’s score won a BAFTA and a Grammy.

That same year, Warner Bros. asked the composer to complete its eight-film Harry Potter series with music for the two-part finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2010–11), directed by David Yates. Desplat created a mystical ambience, scoring the decisive final battles between Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) with an apt mixture of suspense and the eerie sounds of black magic at work.

Desplat surprised many by creating music for his first “monster movie,” Gareth Edwards’ remake of Godzilla (2014), starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ken Watanabe. Ominous, powerful, action-filled, it demanded a large orchestra—but, as always, the composer found the heart at the center of the story.

In a very different realm that same year, he conveyed the brilliance and tragedy of English mathematician Alan Turing, whose inventions decoded Nazi messages and helped to win World War II for the Allies. Morten Tyldum’s film The Imitation Game starred Benedict Cumberbatch as the tormented genius and Keira Knightley as a supportive, understanding colleague. It was a tall order, creating music for a wartime thriller as well as a tender platonic love story. Desplat’s fast-moving figures and piano arpeggios suggested both the speed of Turing’s brain and the race to crack the German Enigma code. Cumberbatch’s performance and Desplat’s music accounted for two of the film’s eight Academy Award nominations.

In 2015, Desplat won his first Academy Award, for the music of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). It was his third film for the eccentric American filmmaker Wes Anderson, and the wholly unpredictable, lighthearted story—about the mid-20th-century adventures of the concierge (Ralph Fiennes) of a fabled Mitteleuropa resort and his lobby boy—required an unusual approach. The composer chose an ensemble of mostly Eastern European instruments including the cimbalom, zither, mandolin, and balalaika to suggest the locale and added orchestra, organ, and choir for specific characters and scenes. Charming, fresh, and funny, it was so catchy and appealing that Desplat not only won the Oscar, he also claimed a BAFTA, a Grammy, and a World Soundtrack Award.

Desplat and Anderson have now done seven films together, beginning with Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and most recently The Phoenician Scheme (2025). All have featured surprising and playful combinations of instruments as demonstrated in tonight’s “Wes Anderson Suite,” including the banjo, recorder, and bouncy, childlike fun of Mr. Fox, the delightful music of Grand Budapest Hotel, and the quirky, Erik Satie-like piano miniatures of The French Dispatch (2021).

Desplat has collaborated with Mexican-born filmmaker Guillermo del Toro on several occasions over the past decade, twice in feature films, and one of those features earned the composer his second Academy Award: The Shape of Water (2017). Fantasy films, especially, rely on music to help convince us of the reality of the story and characters, and del Toro’s unexpected love story benefited enormously from the score.

Del Toro’s piece about a mute custodian (Sally Hawkins) who falls in love with an amphibious creature won four Oscars that year, including Best Picture and one for del Toro as director. Flutes, harps, and bandoneon suggest the floating sensation of water that pervades the entire film, with the surprising sound of whistling providing a haunting, human touch.

Desplat reunited with Guillermo del Toro for their most ambitious project: Pinocchio (2022), a stop-motion animation reimagining of Carlo Collodi’s 1883 classic. The story of a wooden puppet magically brought to life as a companion for a grieving woodcarver named Geppetto, it follows his adventures with Sebastian J. Cricket and victimization by the cruel Count Volpe before being reunited with Geppetto. Ewan MacGregor, Gregory Mann, Christoph Waltz, Cate Blanchett, Ron Perlman, and Tilda Swinton were among the voices heard.

It took several years to design and write, and then three more to realize the painstaking and time-consuming work of creating the characters, then animating them a frame at a time. Desplat wrote nine songs, including the memorable “Ciao Papa,” which reflects both the innocence of Pinocchio and the sorrow of Geppetto. And in a nod to the production itself, the composer designed an orchestra consisting almost entirely of wooden instruments (strings, woodwinds, percussion, no brass), plus choir and glass harmonica for the magical Blue Fairy.

Del Toro’s acclaimed film won the Oscar, the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and an Annie as best animated feature, while the composer won an Annie and was Golden Globe-nominated for best song and best score. —Jon Burlingame