SNOW WHITE ENTERS THE BULLRING
and other tales you have never heard like this

The clash between light and shadow, between grace and evil, sets the tone for our upcoming film music events. A clash that ranges, musically speaking, from flamenco to full-blown symphonic scores. Faust and Mephisto, Snow White and the Stepmother, Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter, Eliot Ness and Al Capone: these odd yet somehow enduring couples inspire a galvanizing symphony of yin-yang duality and attraction.

This eternal struggle converges with great originality, dark humor and dramatic punch in BLANCANIEVES (2012), a retelling of the Snow White tale set in 1920's Andalusia. Pablo Berger's multi-awarded silent film is sustained by a fascinating symphonic score by Alfonso de Vilallonga. The film's lavish cinematography may be in black and white but the music brings out all the colors: accordion, singing saw, ukelele, hand clapping, flamenco singing and guitar playing are part of the dazzling music tapestry. The visual sources of Berger's dream-like vision of Spain are equally variegated. As this non-Disney Blancanieves becomes a bullfighter, we are reminded of Luis Buñuel's and Erich von Stroheim's sense of cruelty, as well as of F. W. Murnau's talent for visual poetry.

Next to the Brothers Grimm story, another German iconic tale provides the source material for F. W. Murnau's masterpiece FAUST (1926) that we present in Dortmund (Germany) with a modern symphonic composition by Bernd Schultheis. Emil Janning's naughty impersonation of Mephisto echoes in the Mephistophelian bullfighting manager from BLANCANIEVES ... and the character's metamorphoses do not end here! In RAPSODIA SATANICA (1917), that we present in Münster (Germany), Mephisto draws the Italian diva Lyda Borelli into a nightmarish quest for eternal beauty. Directed by Nino Oxilia, RAPSODIA SATANICA is a pure art-nouveau cinematic joy graced by a superb original composition written by Pietro Mascagni - the only film score composed by the opera master of Cavalleria rusticana (1890) and L'amico Fritz (1891).

Finally, the Brandenburger Symphoniker, under the baton of Jürgen Bruns, will premiere on April 15 our new film music programme HEROES AND VILLAINS, a musical journey through sixty years of aural and cinematic mythmaking that starts with Elmer Bernstein's THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960) and ends with Ennio Morricone's full-blooded score for THE HATEFUL EIGHT (2015). The notes of Bernard Herrmann, Gabriel Yared, Jerry Goldsmith,  Howard Shore, Yann Tiersen and John Williams, among other brilliant composers, will certainly make the audience swing between light and darkness!