Interstellar Soundtrack

We rate the Interstellar soundtrack A tier, and we think it is the best film score of its decade: it took the one instrument cinema had left to horror films and churches and made it mean distance. It is A, not S, under our rule because it is played in concert, most recently live with the film at the Royal Albert Hall on Apr 4, 2026, but no other orchestra has recorded it complete that we could confirm.

2:26 This is the organ of Temple Church in London, played by Roger Sayer, the church's organist at the time, who has since taken the score on the road: his "Interstellar 10" recitals ran through US churches from October 2025 to Oct 9, 2026, and the film itself returned to IMAX for its tenth anniversary, taking $4.5 million from 166 screens in its first weekend (NBC News, Dec 14, 2024). WaterTower Music released the album on Nov 18, 2014 with 16 tracks; the tables below play the 30-track Expanded Edition, the only one Apple Music lists today (Apple Music).

One day of writing, with no script

Christopher Nolan gave Zimmer no screenplay. He sent a typed letter about the film's theme, without the plot, and asked for one day of writing; Zimmer wrote a four-minute piece for piano and organ overnight, and said later, "I really just wrote about what it meant to be a father" (MovieMusicUK, Nov 22, 2014). That piece is the main theme, heard at its plainest in Day One and Message from Home.

The score was recorded in London, at AIR Studios' Lyndhurst Hall and at Temple Church (AllMusic), with a comparatively small ensemble weighted to strings and woodwinds, a choir that was at times turned away from the microphones, and solo piano, violin, harp and steel guitar. Gavin Greenaway and Richard Harvey conducted.

The organ

Zimmer's office called Sayer in March 2014 because Zimmer wanted a real organ and a real organist in place of sampled sounds. The score had to be finished by May, the organ sessions took six days, and Nolan came to hear the main theme recorded (The Diapason). The instrument is a four-manual Harrison & Harrison, built as a ballroom organ for Glen Tanar Castle in Scotland and installed in Temple Church in 1954, as Sayer writes in his own history of it.

On Mar 30, 2015 Zimmer led a 60-piece orchestra and the Royal Albert Hall's own organ live to the film, with Sayer at the console and Michael Caine introducing the evening (Royal Albert Hall).

Nominated four times, never the winner

The score was nominated for the Academy Award, where Alexandre Desplat's The Grand Budapest Hotel won (oscars.org), for the Golden Globe (goldenglobes.com), for the BAFTA (bafta.org) and for the Grammy (grammy.com). The album peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard 200 on the chart dated Dec 6, 2014 (Billboard), and it is still selling: the UK's Official Soundtrack Albums Chart shows it entering on Oct 23, 2025 and reaching No. 40 (Official Charts). We think the awards got this one wrong, and that the chart, eleven years on, is the better judge.

Two tracks have a scene on record. Mountains is the water planet, where the ticking marks an hour that costs seven years on Earth, and Message from Home is the theme alone at the piano for a crew far from it (MovieMusicUK).

Highlights

Thirteen moments inside the tracks, measured by Vi.ki from the uploads on Nov 10, 2026, not picked by ear; the home page says how. The measurement heard an organ enter in eight of the 30 tracks, the right instrument for a score built on one, and the four clearest entries are kept here beside the climaxes. The album's biggest swell is in its first track. The Play column is the time inside the track.

All tracks

The Expanded Edition in its own order, from the uploads WaterTower Music provided to Hans Zimmer's YouTube channel. Each track is its own video, so every Play link starts at 0:00 and the Length column says how long it runs: 2 hours 19 minutes 37 seconds in all by Vi.ki's count on Nov 10, 2026. Tracks 1 to 16 are the album as first released. The longest piece, Murph, runs 11:21, and the shortest, The Wormhole, 1:31.

Editions

Track counts and dates are as Filmtracks lists them, which dates the Expanded Edition Sep 23, 2020; Apple Music shows the same 30 tracks under the 2014 date. Waxwork pressed the Expanded Edition on four LPs with WaterTower (Waxwork Records). No Time for Caution was left off the first album and sold at first as an iTunes exclusive (MovieMusicUK).

Sources

• Interstellar, MovieMusicUK, Nov 22, 2014
• WaterTower Music announces the Interstellar soundtrack, FilmMusic.com, Oct 28, 2014
• Interstellar (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) [Expanded Edition], Apple Music, read Nov 10, 2026
• Interstellar, Filmtracks
• Interstellar, AllMusic
• Interstellar 10 comes to the United States, The Diapason, 2025
• History of the Temple Church organs, The Diapason (Roger Sayer)
• World Premiere of Interstellar, Live in Concert, Royal Albert Hall, Mar 30, 2015
• Interstellar Live, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Apr 4, 2026
• Interstellar's IMAX re-release, NBC News, Dec 14, 2024
• The 87th Academy Awards, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
• Interstellar, Golden Globes
• Original Music, BAFTA
• Hans Zimmer, Recording Academy
• Hans Zimmer chart history, Billboard 200, Billboard
• Interstellar OST, Official Charts
• Interstellar Expanded Edition, Waxwork Records