Column: ‘The Batman in Concert’ will be a feast for the ears, performed live at the Auditorium Theatre

You’ve heard it. Some of it, at least.

You’ve heard Michael Giacchino’s remarkable film music, which is worth hearing in any context.

That lush, wild, bongo-forward theme from “The Incredibles”? That’s his. The soaring waltz motif from “Up,” the original score for which Giacchino won the Oscar? His, too.

And that Batman film from last year, the one we didn’t know we wanted or needed until it showed up?

For “The Batman,” filmed partly in the Loop, Giacchino wrote a sweeping, hypnotic two hours of Gotham City menace, plus a singular, melancholy love theme, plus psychological horror, plus riveting action music. It’s a superb, darkly melodic contemporary score.

This Saturday at the Auditorium Theatre, 49 musicians with the Chicago Philharmonic will bring that score to life as part of the “DC in Concert” series sanctioned by Warner Brothers and TCG Entertainment.

“I’ve done it 20, 25 times now, counting rehearsals,” says conductor James Olmstead, who will lead Saturday’s presentation. “It just doesn’t get old. I love it. In fact, I find more and more to love about Giacchino’s score the more I hear it.”

For newcomers to this format: The orchestra resides on stage, beneath the screen showing the film. The score is the score you’d hear seeing “The Batman” in a conventional movie house, or streaming at home, though at a slightly reduced size; original motion picture soundtracks often deploy up to 70 or 80 or more musicians for the score.

And yet, 49 musicians can make a serious impact, particularly in contrast to Broadway musicals. Olmstead says he is currently conducting the Neil Diamond musical “A Beautiful Noise” on Broadway with 12 musicians in the pit. He recently concluded the Broadway revival of “The Music Man,” which had 24.

It’s one of the reasons, he says, he’s “such a fan of these concert series” that match a live orchestra with a full screening. Bringing a score like ‘The Batman’ with a 49-piece orchestra — professionally I enjoy it, of course, but on a personal level I’m just thrilled to hear it while it’s happening.”

Olmstead has conducted Giacchino’s score in a live-to-screen setting seven times, most recently in Los Angeles and Miami. He rehearsed first in Prague and played four European dates with “The Batman,” before taking it to America.

Giacchino, says Olmstead, develops insinuating symphonic themes for each major character, “while also digging deeply into the psychology of the Riddler (here, a serial killer on a twisted crusade against Gotham politics as usual). A lot of the score is in his brain, basically, and for that sound, Giacchino does some amazing things with the strings. He gives the whole of Gotham City this very unusual tremolo string sound which calls for the musicians to figure out what ‘skitters’ are.”

So what are skitters?

“It’s a tremolo that’s very quick. The string musicians take their bows and sort of skitter over the strings, making a kind of dghdkgddgggtttt sound. Or Giacchino will have the strings start in union and slooooowwwwly over the course of eight bars spread apart and change pitches, until they’re all very dissonant. It’s not precisely notated, but it’s described. And the players use their own taste to really make it work.”

It’s a big film with a lot of music, nearly two hours’ worth. Olmstead contrasts it with another “DC in Concert” presentation he has conducted, the 1989 “Batman” featuring the Danny Elfman score. Different movie, different sound, he says: “bouncier, quirkier.” Whereas Giacchino takes a note from the Nirvana song “Something in the Way,” one of Bruce Wayne’s go-tos for maximum brooding intensity, and “incorporates pieces of that melody throughout the entire orchestration.”

Chronologically, the “DC in Concert” website begins with the ‘89 “Batman” and will, DC says, include the forthcoming franchise offerings “The Flash” (music by Benjamin Wallfisch) and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” (music by Harry Gregson-Williams). Elfman’s score can be heard wherever the earlier DC venture “Justice League” ends up touring; the more recent “Black Adam” (Lorne Balfe, composer) and ”Shazam! Fury of the Gods” (Christophe Beck) fill out “DC in Concert” titles available for booking.

Millions of DC fans have millions of opinions on the merits of those films, and perhaps less concretely, opinions about the music. I am a critic. Therefore I have billions of ‘em, the pertinent one for the purposes of “The Batman in Concert” this Saturday being: Go, and listen, and watch. It’s likely to be the strongest audio/visual pairing of its kind since Michael Abels conducted his “Get Out” score for the Chicago Sinfonietta in 2019.

We’re entering an encouraging phase of film score programming in Chicago. In the current calendar year the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s “CSO at the Movies” slate leans once again on John Williams and extraordinarily familiar fan favorites (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in June; “Home Alone” in December). Next year brings “An American in Paris” and Gershwin to the CSO. Too often sidelined in favor of the “Star Wars” sonic universe, the CSO will present one of Williams’ finest scores, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” in a live accompaniment of that 1977 classic. And in June 2024, composer Joe Hisaishi’s music for Hayao Miyazaki and Takeshi Kitano films will complement the “CSO at the Movies” lineup.

“The Batman in Concert” conductor Olmstead believes Giacchino stands with those titans.

“There’s really no question. He’s already had one of the greatest careers of any film composer. The range of styles, the way he moves so fluidly from Pixar to ‘Batman,’ it’s just amazing. The audiences I meet with after the (”Batman in Concert”) show are just knocked out. Parents with teenaged kids, a lot of them. And they’re getting a true symphonic experience they’ve never had before.”

“The Batman in Concert” is 8 p.m. May 6 at the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive; tickets $74-$127 at chicagophilharmonic.org

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

mjphillips@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @phillipstribune