Director and co-writer John Milius’s intention with the 1982 adventure Conan the Barbarian was to create an opera in the form of film. With its power, energy and moments of tenderness, Basil Poledouris’s music supports the storyline in a similar way to a work written for the stage.

The superb Glatter-Götz/Rosales organ in Claremont, California was designed to inspire creativity and innovation, and Philipp Pelster’s vision in making a complete film-score transcription especially for the unique possibilities of this instrument transforms the orchestral colours of the original to generate a completely new and richly rewarding musical experience.

The adaptation of film music for concert performance has been a popular phenomenon for many years. There are few organists who take up this challenge, however, and in most cases these take the form of shorter excerpts or are used as rousing encores. In transcribing the entire music for the richly scored film Conan the Barbarian, Philipp Pelster introduces an entirely new approach to the future of the pipe organ. His creative resourcefulness with the spectacular sounding Glatter-Götz/Rosales organ in Claremont, California delivers an inspiring impulse which takes the organ as far beyond its church associations as Charles-Marie Widor did with his Organ Symphonies in the 19th century.