MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

John Steinbeck’s East of Eden is one of the great American novels, a sprawling, multigenerational examination of family, jealousy, love, betrayal, and the eternal struggle between good and evil. Published in 1952, it was famously adapted into a 1955 film directed by Elia Kazan and starring James Dean, and subsequently into an acclaimed 1981 television miniseries starring Jane Seymour, Timothy Bottoms, and Bruce Boxleitner. Now, more than forty years later, Netflix has produced a lavish seven-part adaptation, developed by Zoe Kazan – Elia’s granddaughter – which attempts to capture the full scope of Steinbeck’s extraordinary literary achievement.

The story follows the fortunes of the Trask family between the American Civil War and World War I, focusing initially on brothers Adam (Christopher Abbott) and Charles (Mike Faist), whose complicated relationship is disrupted by the arrival of the beautiful, manipulative Cathy Ames (Florence Pugh). As the decades pass, the family’s experiences of violence, heartbreak, and forgiveness are repeated through Adam’s sons, Caleb and Aron, played by Joseph Zada and Joe Anders. Hoon Lee, Ciarán Hinds, Tracy Letts, and Martha Plimpton co-star in major supporting roles, with Lee leaving an especially positive impression as Adam’s wise, intelligent, code-switching Chinese manservant, also named Lee. The series was developed by Kazan alongside veteran screenwriter Jeb Stuart and was filmed extensively in New Zealand, with Garth Davis directing the first four episodes and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre the final three.

The score for East of Eden is by American composer Laura Karpman, who has enjoyed a remarkable career resurgence over the last several years. Having initially established herself through television projects such as Taken, Odyssey 5, and Lovecraft Country, Karpman subsequently became an important musical voice in the Marvel universe, scoring productions such as Ms. Marvel, The Marvels, and Captain America: Brave New World. Her imaginative, jazz-influenced music for American Fiction earned her an Academy Award nomination in 2024, and East of Eden represents another impressive addition to an increasingly distinguished filmography.

Karpman was especially conscious of the musical legacy she was inheriting. Leonard Rosenman’s music for the 1955 film combined a gorgeous, expansive Americana theme with startling modernist dissonance, reflecting the psychological turmoil of James Dean’s character. Lee Holdridge’s magnificent score for the 1981 miniseries, meanwhile, was a more traditionally romantic, symphonic work, rich in memorable melodies and sweeping orchestral emotion. Karpman’s interpretation falls somewhere between the two: less overtly melodic than Holdridge, but considerably more intimate and psychologically searching than Rosenman, emphasizing the darkness beneath the story’s pastoral California landscapes.

In interviews, Karpman has explained that her initial intention was to create a theme exploring the meaning of home, drawing on the American symphonic tradition. She also developed a separate musical identity for Cathy, whom she regards not simply as a villain but as a deeply complicated, damaged individual. She describes Cathy’s theme as an unsettled four-note motif, continually shifting harmonically, an approach that subtly acknowledges her admiration for Rosenman’s modernist sensibilities. The rest of the predominantly string-based score (recorded in Austria with the Vienna Synchron Orchestra) features prominent solo performances by violist Nadia Sirota, cellist Ben Lash, and violinists Meredith Ezinma and Hanbyul Jang, alongside piano, occasional voices, and discreet electronics.

What’s interesting about this is that, on first impression, the score feels perhaps a little overly-subdued, and I myself was guilty of dismissing it as such; I admit that, initially, I found myself getting bored with it quite quickly, and I had trouble grasping the thematic ideas and the dramatic narrative. However, once you understand the tone of the piece, the style that the directors adopted, and the overall aesthetic that Zoe Kazan brought to bear on Steinbeck’s narrative, the intricacy and intelligence of Karpman’s music reveal themselves. To be clear – anyone looking for the massive symphonic richness of Lee Holdridge’s score, or the sometimes abrasive modernism of Leonard Rosenman’s work, won’t find it here. Karpman finds her own musical path into the darkness of Cathy Ames’s story, and the score is all the better for it.

The album opens with the ominous “Snake in the Grass,” an unsettling mixture of slithering strings and electronic textures that establishes the score’s underlying sense of malevolence and perfectly suits the character of Cathy/Kate. The subsequent “East of Eden” introduces Karpman’s beautiful main title theme, a warm, expressive piece of orchestral Americana for a rich string ensemble and a prominent harp that offers a welcome contrast to the opening darkness. “Brothers” is similarly impressive, combining tenderness and melancholy with an increasingly troubled harmonic language that perfectly captures the complicated relationship between Adam and Charles. The way Karpman overlaps solo violins and fiddles cleverly captures multiple ideas simultaneously – the theme is unusually intangible, dissonant, and even a little chaotic, evoking two brothers who do not ‘fit together,’ while the overall instrumental palette draws on American Civil War-era musical idioms that illustrate the time period of the story’s opening sequences.

“Monsters Are Variations” has an unsettling sound, with agitated string passages that seem perpetually on edge, unresolved and circling around an unnerving minor-key tonality. The juxtaposition of harmonic violence and pastoral beauty is especially effective, while the subsequent “Adam Comes Home” develops a poignant theme for Adam, alternating between aching sadness and a more resolute, dignified sound. “Fire” is one of the score’s most fascinating cues, contrasting percussive string writing and aggressive piano textures with an evocative solo fiddle melody, offering an unusual musical depiction of the revelation concerning what happened to Cathy’s childhood home and the origins of many of her adult psychological problems.

“Salinas” offers one of the album’s most beautiful passages, reprising the main title theme, with its lyrical piano and string writing evoking the California countryside before an unexpectedly dissonant conclusion reminds us that happiness in Steinbeck’s world is invariably fragile. The lovely “Lee” introduces a deceptively playful string-led theme for Hoon Lee’s character, incorporating subtle suggestions of Chinese musical traditions without resorting to obvious ethnic pastiche. “Caring” and “Horizons” both feature rich, resonant cello writing, elegantly interwoven with expressive solo violin passages, underscoring the carefree early days in the Salinas Valley. Later, the gorgeous “Caleb and Aron” possesses an almost lullaby-like innocence, although the darker orchestral textures surrounding the melody have tonal echoes of the earlier “Brothers” theme, foreshadowing how the younger generation of men is doomed to inherit the emotional burdens of its parents.

Once Cathy abandons her family and sets herself up in the brothel run by the kindly Madam Faye, Karpman’s music takes a correspondingly sinister turn, mirroring her slow descent into depravity and madness. “Torture” is a complicated piece full of frantic, distressed string writing and eerie, unsettling electronic textures. “Mister Bacon” blends the piano sonorities of a religious hymn with sonic distortions that encapsulate the duality of the character – a loving father to Abra, who becomes an important figure in the lives of both Aron and Caleb, but who is also a regular customer at Cathy’s brothel and harbors a violent streak.

Later, “The Lie” incorporates a haunting reprise of the old hymn “Lord of All Hopefulness” into a bed of disquieting strings, juxtaposing religion and sin. “Beauty in Truth” offsets Karpman’s expressive solo violins against a surging, dramatic string ensemble. “Loss” offers an extended rumination on the concept as it relates to the Trask family, while “The Letter” at times reaches Wojciech Kilar-esque heights of aching pathos and emotional devastation. Elsewhere, the poignant, searching “Lee Gave Me a Star” and the hopeful “The Great Try” are superb explorations of both Lee’s musical material and the theme for Caleb and Aron, showing how Lee becomes more of a father to the young boys than their actual father, while putting his own dreams of opening a bookstore in San Francisco’s Chinatown on hold.

The final three cues – “Futures,” “Kate Chooses,” and “Still With Us” – reprise several thematic ideas related to Kate, Adam, and Adam’s sons, ruminating on each of their fates: Kate’s suicide from an overdose of morphine, Aron’s tragic death on the battlefields of France during World War I, Adam becoming incapacitated by a stroke, and his eventual reconciliation with Cal over the Hebrew concept of ‘timshel,’ which affirms humanity’s capacity for moral agency and the freedom to choose between good and evil rather than being bound by predestination. Karpman’s writing here stays within the established sound of the score, layering solo violins against a string ensemble, backed by piano and woodwinds, and even occasional choral textures, but she allows the music to rise to some outstanding emotional heights, especially during the final two tracks.

On balance, East of Eden is an excellent score. It may take a while to connect fully with some listeners – as it did with me – and having an understanding of its use in context, as well as the overall tone and approach of the project as a whole, is vitally important, but once it clicks, once it gets under your skin, it is exceptionally rewarding. What I particularly admire about the score is Karpman’s ability to convey genuine emotional complexity without sacrificing musical beauty. The music can occasionally be abrasive, even uncomfortable, but this makes its moments of warmth all the more affecting. It is neither the sweeping romantic epic Holdridge might have written nor the uncompromising modernist statement Rosenman delivered, but something uniquely its own: a sophisticated, moving examination of the human condition.

Buy the East of Eden soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• Snake in the Grass (2:53)
• East of Eden (1:44)
• Brothers (3:33)
• Monsters Are Variations (3:17)
• Adam Comes Home (2:07)
• Fire (3:51)
• Followed (1:38)
• Salinas (3:44)
• Lee (2:22)
• Caring (1:31)
• Horizons (2:10)
• Caleb and Aron (4:56)
• Torture (2:01)
• Mister Bacon (2:12)
• Lee Gave Me a Star (3:54)
• The Lie (1:31)
• Beauty in Truth (2:54)
• Loss (2:27)
• The Letter (3:21)
• The Great Try (2:18)
• Futures (5:10)
• Kate Chooses (4:12)
• Still With Us (3:25)

Running Time: 67 minutes 14 seconds

Netflix Music (2026)

Music composed by Laura Karpman. Conducted by Gottfried Rabl and Berhard Melbye Voss. Orchestrations by Laura Karpman. Additional music by Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum. Featured musical soloists Nadia Sirota, Ben Lash, Meredith Ezinma and Hanbyul Jang. Recorded and mixed by Bernd Mazagg. Edited by Suzana Peric. Album produced by Laura Karpman.