In October Carl Davis’ score for Victor Sjöström’s 1928 Western The Wind appears with the Orchestre National de Lyon and Timothy Brock (16 October) and Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, conducted by Christian Schumann, receiving its Spanish premiere at Seminci, the Valladolid International Film Festival (31 October).
One of the last silents to be released by MGM, the film stars Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson and Montagu Love. It was celebrated for its uncompromising depiction of life on the Texan prairie, terrifying storm sequence, and the psychological intensity of the violent story at its heart, represented by the titular wind that buffets the sheltered Virginian girl Letty.
Davis’ 80-minute score for strings, percussion, keyboards, and cimbalom, is one of his most distinctive creations. Composed in 1983 for Thames Television, it was premiered by Davis at the Dominion Theatre. Timothy Brock has likened its extensive use of percussion to “the tangible sensation of that sandy grit in your ears”; its harmonic language, Brock notes, is “brutal and relentless”, growing in harshness as Letty becomes more desperate and isolated. For Brock, it represents the apex of Davis’ music for silent film: “instinctive musical reactions to the characters on screen…like [Davis] is watching the film for the first time with you.”
Brock conducted The Wind in June 2024 at the Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna; in recent seasons he has conducted Davis’ score for Flesh and the Devil (with the Orchestre National de Lyon in 2020), Harold Lloyd classics Safety Last! and The Freshman. Davis himself conducted numerous performances of The Wind, including at the Philharmonie Luxembourg, the Wiener Konzerthaus, BOZAR, and BFU Southbank. Schumann previously conducted Davis’ The Kid Brother with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León in 2023; the orchestra also previously performed Safety Last! in 2018 at Seminci.