Carl Davis’ score to Fred Niblo’s silent epic Ben-Hur appears with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Matthew Kraemer, on 18 October. The 141-minute score to the film, which celebrates its centenary in 2025, uses a vast orchestral palette with a Wagnerian sweep appropriate to the film’s sea battle and grand historical narrative.
Wagner’s influence on Davis’ score is reflected in its system of descriptive leitmotifs, as well as references to the ‘Dresden Amen’ that Wagner used in Parsifal and the same opera’s ethereal prelude. Davis himself recorded Ben-Hur with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in 2012, and it has received over 65 performances since its 1987 debut at the London Palladium, also conducted by the composer; it most recently appeared in January 2025 in Potsdam with the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg, conducted by Gottfried Rabl.
The vast forces Davis employs in the piece make it a distinctive work in his catalogue of film scores. The famous Chariot Race sequence, with a thrilling triplet theme, makes use of two sets of timpani, played in antiphonal competition, in a 9-minute symphonic sweep tracking every twist and turn of the race; Davis was inspired himself by the original Axt / Mendoza score from 1925. The climactic earthquake at the end of the film brings together orchestra, organ, tam-tam and thunder-sheet – one of the most powerful and dissonant eruptions in Davis’ orchestral output.
The work was orchestrated with the assistance of David and Colin Matthews; the brothers worked several times with Davis over the course of his career, assisting particularly on his magisterial score for Abel Gance’s 5 ½-hour epic Napoléon; David would also orchestrate part of Davis’ final ballet score Le Fantôme et Christine, a reimagining of Gaston Leroux’s novel for the dance stage, which premiered with Shanghai Ballet in 2023.
September 2025 saw the opening of a season-long focus on Davis’ scores for the Chaplin ‘Mutual’ comedies at Staatstheater Kassel, beginning with a triple bill of The Adenturer, The Rink, and The Immigrant. Rivalling Ben-Hur in terms of scale and extravagance, Davis’ score for Rupert Julian’s The Phantom of the Opera receives two performances this autumn, the film also celebrating its centenary: on 1 October it appears in Turin with the Orchestra Sinfonica RAI, conducted by Gioele Muglialdo, and on 11 October in Middletown, Ohio, with the Butler Philharmonic Orchestra at the Sorg Opera Theatre.