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Watching Murnau’s «Faust» one might hear –
amongst folk-flavoured melodies and passages of sacred music – references to avant
garde, modern jazz and even easy listening.
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At the Jazzkaar:
Silent movie FAUST
23.04. 22.00 Kinomaja
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The spirit of Goethe and the ghost of Faust
putting in an appearance at an end-of-millenium jazz festival? …Not exactly a typical
jazz story, is it? Well, no. But then again, «Faust» as multi-mediated by this Frankfort
quartet – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s silent movie classic showing on the screen
& a live soundtrack performed simultaneously by Ensemble Metropolis Projekt– is
not the most usual presentation of Goethe’s Meisterwerk, either...
Murnau’s film of 1925/6 – featuring Gösta Ekman, Emil Jannings, Camilla Horn,
Frida Richard, Wilhelm Dieterle et al; camera work by Carl Hoffmann – is more than
just a screen production of Goethe’s «Faust». To the Goethe-related battle between
good and evil, raging inside of Faust until the redeeming power of love tips the scales,
Murnau adapted additional story lines from an old folk legend and from Christopher
Marlow’s play of 1588.
Metropolis Projekt’s way with the accompaniment revives the musical manners common in
the era of silent movies. On the other hand, certain sounds produced now by the
Frankfurters could not have been that ordinary in the movie houses back in the 1920s.
Anyway, watching Murnau’s «Faust» one might hear – amongst folk-flavoured
melodies and passages of sacred music – references to avant garde, modern jazz and
even easy listening.
For the quartet, «Faust» is the fourth work in this vein over the past four years. The
first one, music for Fritz Lang’s «Metropolis», was initiated by their manager
Christoph Wüstenhagen. Up to now Metropolis Projekt have taken the great company of
«silent classics» to three continents, to more than twenty countries. The Goethe
Institute aids their present tour, tied in with the Year of Goethe.
Three of the members of the group – Colin Dunwoodie (sax, fl, bcl), Ernst
Seitz (p), Silvia Sauer (voc) – had made music together for several years
prior to being joined by Ralph Himmler (trombone) and founding the Metropolis
Projekt. |
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