London Dreaming - The Idea with a live score

THE IDEA Berthold Bartosch’s 1932 film with Live Theremin and Piano Accompaniment Saturday 4th May 2019 at 8:00 pm Arrival instructions for the Idea: Please note as the Cemetery will be closed to the general public from 6 pm, the only entrance that will be open for the performance is the one on Old Brompton Road. This entrance will be open from 7:30 pm and the performance will start at 8:00 pm. This will allow ample time for all guests to arrive, gain admittance from the gatekeeper and make the considerable journey to the chapel which stands in the middle of the cemetery. Experience the magic of the first animated film to deal with big philosophical ideas with a live score accompaniment. Berthold Bartosch’s dream-like allegorical film is a blend of metaphor, fable, and fantasy dealing with a conservative political order's fight against the birth of a new idea. Based on a wordless novel by the preeminent woodcut artist Frans Masereel, a close friend of the Dadaist George Grosz, "The Idea” takes the form of a naked muse that runs amok, creating mayhem and disorder wherever she lingers in her furious foray through a world of men. Bartosch spent two years animating Masereel's story of unbridled libertarian feminism in a series of 45,000 handcrafted frames, using jointed cardboard characters and photographing them though moving panes of glass, employing ingenious and often original effects to create the first serious, poetic and tragic work in animation. Theremin virtuoso Lydia Kavina and pianist Thomas Ang will play a new score inspired by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger's haunting and groundbreaking original, the first film music to be written for an electronic instrument. Tickets for this event have now sold out. This event has been brought to you in collaboration with Marek Pytel of Reality Film. Lydia Kavina Lydia Kavina was born in Moscow and began studying the theremin at the age of 9 under the direction of Léon Theremin himself, who was first cousin of her grandfather. She is one of the world’s leading theremin virtuosos and has helped engender the instrument’s renaissance over recent years. She has worked with composers such as Danny Elfman and Howard Shore. As well as championing new and traditional repertoire she also composes for her instrument, most notably in her Concerto for Theremin and Orchestra, first performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra, under Gil Rose, in 1997. Thomas Ang Born and raised in Singapore, Thomas Ang trained at the Royal Academy of Music under the tutelage of Diana Ketler, where he won prizes for his performances of Beethoven, Frederick Delius, Arthur Bliss and other contemporary piano repertoire. He competed for the Academy at the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe intercollegiate competition of 2013, where he was the only undergraduate. He also performs as part of several contemporary-music ensembles, including playing John Cage at the Purcell Room in 2013 and two programmes of Boulez’s music at the 2015 Aldeburgh Music Festival. Marek Pytel Marek Pytel studied film at the Slade School of Fine Art, and curated the first BFI screenings of 1920s Soviet formalist cinema. Pytel is the author of New Babylon, Trauberg, Kozintsev, Shostakovich (1999) and has produced live screen music events at venues both in UK and abroad, including the Barbican, Royal Festival Hall, Cité de la Musique Paris, Queen Elizabeth Hall, National Film Theatre, BFI IMAX, The Sydney Opera House and collaborating with Stephen Coates, the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, among others.

THE IDEA
Berthold Bartosch’s 1932 film with Live Theremin and Piano Accompaniment
Saturday 4th May 2019 at 8:00 pm

Arrival instructions for the Idea: Please note as the Cemetery will be closed to the general public from 6 pm, the only entrance that will be open for the performance is the one on Old Brompton Road. This entrance will be open from 7:30 pm and the performance will start at 8:00 pm. This will allow ample time for all guests to arrive, gain admittance from the gatekeeper and make the considerable journey to the chapel which stands in the middle of the cemetery.

Experience the magic of the first animated film to deal with big philosophical ideas with a live score accompaniment. Berthold Bartosch’s dream-like allegorical film is a blend of metaphor, fable, and fantasy dealing with a conservative political order's fight against the birth of a new idea. Based on a wordless novel by the preeminent woodcut artist Frans Masereel, a close friend of the Dadaist George Grosz, "The Idea” takes the form of a naked muse that runs amok, creating mayhem and disorder wherever she lingers in her furious foray through a world of men.

Bartosch spent two years animating Masereel's story of unbridled libertarian feminism in a series of 45,000 handcrafted frames, using jointed cardboard characters and photographing them though moving panes of glass, employing ingenious and often original effects to create the first serious, poetic and tragic work in animation.

Theremin virtuoso Lydia Kavina and pianist Thomas Ang will play a new score inspired by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger's haunting and groundbreaking original, the first film music to be written for an electronic instrument.

Tickets for this event have now sold out.

This event has been brought to you in collaboration with Marek Pytel of Reality Film.

Lydia Kavina
Lydia Kavina was born in Moscow and began studying the theremin at the age of 9 under the direction of Léon Theremin himself, who was first cousin of her grandfather. She is one of the world’s leading theremin virtuosos and has helped engender the instrument’s renaissance over recent years. She has worked with composers such as Danny Elfman and Howard Shore. As well as championing new and traditional repertoire she also composes for her instrument, most notably in her Concerto for Theremin and Orchestra, first performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra, under Gil Rose, in 1997.

Thomas Ang
Born and raised in Singapore, Thomas Ang trained at the Royal Academy of Music under the tutelage of Diana Ketler, where he won prizes for his performances of Beethoven, Frederick Delius, Arthur Bliss and other contemporary piano repertoire. He competed for the Academy at the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe intercollegiate competition of 2013, where he was the only undergraduate. He also performs as part of several contemporary-music ensembles, including playing John Cage at the Purcell Room in 2013 and two programmes of Boulez’s music at the 2015 Aldeburgh Music Festival.

Marek Pytel
Marek Pytel studied film at the Slade School of Fine Art, and curated the first BFI screenings of 1920s Soviet formalist cinema. Pytel is the author of New Babylon, Trauberg, Kozintsev, Shostakovich (1999) and has produced live screen music events at venues both in UK and abroad, including the Barbican, Royal Festival Hall, Cité de la Musique Paris, Queen Elizabeth Hall, National Film Theatre, BFI IMAX, The Sydney Opera House and collaborating with Stephen Coates, the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, among others.

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