He has worked with cutting-edge composers, musicians and Hollywood visionaries. On Saturday at the Howard Assembly Room, Hugh Brunt returns to his first-love: a six-foot killer robot from the future. Words: Neil Mudd. Photo: Trent McMinn
If he was to convince people why they should care about classical music, Hugh Brunt would point to Stravinsky, summing up the nonconformist Russian composer in just three words: ‘genius’, ‘communicator’ and (elliptically) ‘chameleon.’
The 31 year old co-Artistic Director of the London Contemporary Orchestra is in Leeds at the Howard Assembly Room this weekend to conduct a live orchestral score for a screening of Fritz Lang’s dystopian sci-fi marathon, Metropolis. It is safe to assume he is expecting a kinder reception than Stravinsky received when he premiered his defining work The Rites of Spring. Then the audience rioted.
With fellow conductor and violist, Robert Ames, Brunt set up the LCO nearly a decade ago with the aim of broadening the kerb appeal of contemporary classical music. “LCO’s programming is often deliberately eclectic to reflect and challenge the way we experience music day to day,” he explains, writing his responses to my questions on an overnight return business-trip from the US. “As such, our collaborations will span anything from ambient electronica to indie rock to techno that you can’t dance to. Stylistically it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s strong, engaging music.”
A forceful vocal advocate of music education and its benefits for young people, Brunt says “the wide-ranging and transferable benefits of children being exposed to music-making” cannot be overstated. The varied output projects of the LCO seek to “impress upon the decision-makers the countless cases for music inspiring teamwork, communication, expression and creative thinking.”
The conductor is no stranger to cinema, having worked on a number of high-profile films, including The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson’s dark disaffection with post-war America. More recently, he has been at work on the latest release in the rebooted Alien franchise, Alien: Covenant. Closely associated with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, Brunt has collaborated on an assortment of the composer’s projects, among them the first live screening of another Anderson film, There Will Be Blood.
When it comes to Lang’s nightmare vision of the future, the conductor has a personal connection: “Metropolis, with this original score by Gottfried Huppertz, was the first ‘concert-film’ I conducted with the LCO at the Roundhouse in Camden in 2010. It’s a bastion of German Expressionism and arguably the mother of sci-fi cinema. So bold in its vision: a fascinating exploration of modern technology. The production values and scale of concept are eye-watering.”
The version being screened at the Howard Assembly Room restores nearly thirty minutes of newly discovered footage which Brunt says brings its own logistical pressures: “The score demands exceptional stamina from the musicians – being a silent film, the majority of the orchestra play without break for two and half hours.”
Another consideration is the lack of a click-track (a method of syncing musicians and film). The performance will effectively recreate the conditions of the film’s original premiere in 1927. “It’s a very authentic way of working in that respect,” says Brunt. “The orchestra and I can allow the music to ‘breathe’ and respond to the picture in a very natural way. It almost becomes a ‘film ballet’. Huppertz’s original score is not incredibly well-known, perhaps in part due to the number of re-scorings the film has undergone in the past forty-odd years. There’s something incredibly powerful and beautiful about (it).”
With future plans including a short promotional trip to New York and Los Angeles and talk of a live screening of Macbeth with Jed Kurzel’s “brilliant, visceral score,” Brunt is remaining fully focused on Saturday’s Metropolis concert-screening: “It’s exciting to think that we will be presenting the original film to some of the audience for the first time, and I hope that the live context will only heighten the experience.”
Metropolis with original score played live by the Orchestra of Opera North | Saturday 6th May 2017 at 7.15 pm. | More information, including tickets here