On 16 September Neil Brand’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail makes its debut in Macedonia. The ensemble version of the 74-minute soundtrack will be performed by students from the Fame’s Institute, conducted by Mirian Khukhunaishvili and in collaboration with the National Cinematheque of North Macedonia, as part of the Silent and Classical Film Festival in Skopje.
1929’s Blackmail is regarded as one of Hitchcock’s most brilliant thrillers and showcased his mastery of the silent form; its alternative version, with sound, was among the first successful talkies in cinema history. It tells the story of a London woman who is blackmailed after killing the man who forces himself upon her; it captures Hitchcock’s exploration of the power of sin and guilt as well as his fascination with crime, and those who get away with it.
Blackmail was the first British silent drama to be newly scored for full orchestra since the advent of sound. Brand’s 76-minute score takes in the influences of the key composers Hitchcock would work with across his career, with Bernard Herrmann Franz Waxman, and Miklos Rozsa providing Brand with his musical toolbox; read an in-depth discussion of Brand’s work on his score for the movie here on the BFI website.
Brand notes of his score,
Hitchcock makes his musical requirements very obvious from beyond the grave, through masterly direction of the action. Like Hitch, I fell in love with Anny Ondra and tried to make the music complicit in her seduction (it’s that beautiful dress that gets her into trouble - in my score when she wears it she becomes Cinderella unaware she is about to be raped by Prince Charming) and I also tried to mirror Hitch’s love of London and its people, with the exception of its policemen.
In June 2024 Philippe Béran conducted Lemanic Modern Ensemble in Brand’s acclaimed music for Hitchcock’s The Lodger in Geneva; in 2023 Béran and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana opened the Locarno Film Festival with his 90-minute score. Brand’s soundtrack for The Lodger was commissioned by Criterion Video to launch the second annual Yorkshire Silent Film Festival in 2017.
…the Piazza Maggiore late-night screenings featured another awesome sight: an audience of 5,000 hooked on…rand’s first score for full orchestra, a Herrmann- esque creation pulsing with fear and desire. Spectacular.
Geoff Brown, Sight and Sound
Neil Brand’s score was amazing, it picked out so many details that you might miss without the music being there, and it really brought the film to life… this odd coincidence of people and light and chemicals trapped in this medium but somehow being conjured back to life before our eyes and ears in that [performance] was extraordinary.
BBC Radio 4 (Matthew Sweet)