By Linda Geary
The Brantford Symphony
orchestra attempted the nearly impossible feat of accompanying a 75-minute
silent film on Sunday and came out a big winner in the eyes of a mid-sized, but
enthusiastic audience.
With
highly-skilled improvisationalist Rick Friend at the grand piano and 65
professional musicians under the baton of David Bowser, Buster Keaton’s silent
film, The General, moved the Sanderson Centre crowd to roars of laughter and a
new appreciation of their local orchestra. In the end, the BSO and guest Friend
received a well-deserved standing ovation.
Under the powerful
spell of Keaton’s comic visuals (appearing on the drop-down screen above the
musicians on stage), anyone trying to sit back and listen to the orchestra on
its own was making a real mistake. This was not just a concert; it was a
dual-media event.
The
meticulous attention Keaton paid to the timing of pratfalls meant the real fun
of the night was really about the way the music and the film connected to make
a new and inseparable art form.
Fortunately
for us, conductor Bowser is a good sport. He took on the incredible
multi-faceted task of conducting not just from his music scores but also from a
complex system of visual cues, preparing his musicians for smooth entrances and
critical tempos while he watched the film racing by from his podium. The sense
that we were hearing an orchestra perform on a high wire without benefit of net
seemed somehow a perfect fit, especially given the vaudevillian context of
Keaton’s production.
The
orchestra music of the evening, unfortunately not publicized ahead of time,
included selections from two Suites by Kabalevsky and Prokofiev, the
spectacular cannonade of the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky, and part of
Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, along with his popular Wellington’s Victory.
Finally,
a couple of American folk tunes arranged by Charles Emmett underscored the
movie’s locale outside Chattanooga during a Civil War incident involving both
Union and Confederate soldiers.
Bridging
the gaps between various segments of these pieces, pianist Friend improvised
some brilliantly-timed riffs and extended romps in similar styles, and then
added his own perfect sense of punctuation to cap off the comic moments.
Friend’s lifetime of making his piano do the talking for silent film reached
its culmination, however, in his exceptional orchestral score.
The
Kabalevsky works included three effervescent dance scenes from The Comedians.
Originally written for small orchestra, they helped to set a comic mood.
The
Prokofiev numbers were caricature dances from Prokofiev’s suite written
originally for a satirical Russian film of the 1930’s, Lieutenant Kije (about a
soldier who doesn’t exist). The BSO rollicked through four dances from this
suite intermittently and with proper gusto, beginning with Kije’s Wedding. This
selection first exposes Keaton (as wannabe soldier Johnny Grey) facing the
dilemma of his unrequited love for the beauteous Annabelle Lee and,
simultaneously, the theft of this beloved train engine.
The
greatest pleasure of the evening, however, for many in the audience, was the
treat of hearing Friend and BSO team up to give a very creditable reading of
the second and third movements of Beethoven’s Concerto No. 1.
Again,
this was unadvertised until audience members opened their program notes, so a
bit of the anticipatory pleasure was lost. But, having said that, it is only
fair to add that the great musical engine of the third movement, the Rondo, had
audience members holding their sides as the emotion of the music fit
hilariously against the commotion of the run-away locomotive on the screen.
Most
early silent films were normally accompanied by piano or organ. Live music was
only needed to cover the racket of noisy film projectors during days of the
silent film.
Today,
those of us in Brantford who attended this concert must consider ourselves
lucky indeed to have heard Keaton’s vision performed live, so lavishly and so
artfully. The Sanderson Centre should have been overflowing to standing room
only.
Linda
Geary is a freelance writer and reviewer based in Paris.