OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 12 November 2011

TO paraphrase the sub-title of F. W. Murnau’s extraordinary film, this was a story of two art forms meeting in complementary fashion.

Aberdeenshire guitarist Graeme Stephen explained the background to this project in our interview, but a brief recapitulation is in order.

Graeme Stephen

He has a long-standing fascination with the film, and an equally long-standing desire to do something musical with it. An award from Creative Scotland’s New Music fund oiled the wheels, and the OneTouch doubled as both cinema and concert venue in his imaginative and beautifully executed realisation of that wish.

He had assembled a quintet of trusted collaborators for the project, teaming up his own incisive guitar work with the contributions of saxophonist Phil Bancroft, cellist Ben Davis and Shetland fiddler Chris Stout, ranged on the right of the stage, and drummer Chris Wallace, set up on the left alongside the guitarist.

The performed Stephen’s score (with a bit of judicious improvisation thrown in, although the joins were pretty seamless) as the film screened, creating something of a challenge for the audience in trying to take in the intricate detail of the music while thoroughly absorbed in the compelling on-screen action.

There was little option but to focus on the visuals and allow the music to work its way into your mind, bearing in mind that this was not simply a soundtrack to the film.

The music was an artistic response to Murnau’s work in its own right, and although it was difficult to be sure on a single hearing, sounded more than strong enough to stand up independently of the film, whether in performance or as a recording.

The two certainly worked together very effectively, both in conventional response to the visual action and in more abstract fashion. Stephen made imaginative use of the wide palette of musical colour and texture available to him from this unconventional instrumentation.

It allowed him to respond to the full range of emotional moods and atmospheres conjured up in Murnau’s expressionist masterpiece, from moments of tender intimacy to jarring slashes of dissonant punctuation in the most dramatic episodes. Those responses only very occasionally felt a little too obvious or conventional.

An absorbing evening, with further performances lined up for Edinburgh and Aberdeen later this month.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2011

Links

• Graeme Stephen