Jonny Greenwood’s Suite from ‘There Will Be Blood’ tours Europe and North America with the Danish String Quartet in late 2025 and early 2026. The 16 ½-minute work appears in a variety of programmes, alongside music by Stravinsky, Ravel, Shostakovich, and Caroline Shaw, as well as arrangements of folk music.
It will appear on 3 September in Malmö, before three November performances in the United States (Lensic Performing Arts Centre, Santa Fe; Oberlin College, and the Rackham Auditorium in Ann Arbor). In 2026 they present the piece at venues including the Tonhalle Zürich, the New England Conservatory, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, and Namur Concert Hall, Belgium. Click here for full details.
The 16-minute selection from Greenwood’s score comprises six cues from Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-winning movie: 1. Oil; 2. HW/Hope of New Fields; 3. Future Markets; 4. Prospectors Quartet; 5. Detuned Orchestra (a version of the track 'There Will Be Blood').
Greenwood’s writing is often rhythmically rugged and jerkily aggressive, capturing the rough-hewn qualities of both landscape and character, with a tense atmosphere of foreboding that captures the noir-feel of this Western. Elsewhere we hear the kinds of dissonant clusters inspired by Penderecki, a key influence on Greenwood. The final movement, as the title implies, requires the lowest string on each instrument to be detuned by one octave, creating a note with a wavering, unpredictable pitch. The Suite premiered in 2021 in Israel with the Carmel Quartet as part of a film-inspired programme that also included works by Korngold, Schubert and Barber – watch them perform it here.
The version of Greenwood’s celebrated score for string quartet complements the Suite from 'There Will Be Blood' for string orchestra, comprising completely different cues. In September 2025 Richard Tognetti – who has previously recorded the piece with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and collaborated with Greenwood on the commission of Water – directs two performances of the Suite with the Arctic Philharmonic. On October 25 it will appear at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester in a performance by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Robert Ames, as part of their ‘Moving Pictures’ programme of great contemporary film scores.
To date the piece has received 100 performances by orchestras worldwide including City of Birmingham SO, Colorado Symphony, BBC Concert Orchestra, Melbourne SO, Chicago SO, Pittsburgh SO, Baltimore SO, Iceland SO, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, MDR Sinfonieorchester, New Zealand SO, Barcelona SO and Hong Kong Philharmonic.