The Locarno Film Festival this year opens with Neil Brand’s music for Henry King’s The Winning of Barbara Worth, with Philippe Béran conducting the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana. It premiered in October 2024 at the Pordedone Silent Film Festival, with Ben Palmer conducting the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone at the Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi.
The 1926 Western stars Ronald Colman, Vilma Bánky and Gary Cooper. It tells the story of the titular orphan, whose parents perish trying to cross the California desert; she is rescued by a man who dreams of irrigating it. Williard Holmes (Colman) tries to do just that, and on meeting Worth falls head-over-heels for her. His rival for her affections is Cooper’s cowboy Abe Lee, though she never feels the same way. The film concludes, famously, with a catastrophic flood sequence, caused by Holmes’ greedy employer; Worth is enamoured of Willard’s heroism and they pledge to be married after he has conquered the river and turned the desert into a paradise.
The 89-minute score is Brand’s first for a Western, created with the assistance of George Morton. Brand’s language pays homage to the great Copland-inspired scores for classic Westerns directed by John Ford, Howard Hawks and Anthony Mann, drawing on wistful, songlike melodies and expansive open harmonies that speak to the vast panoramas of that cinematographic landscape. Brand gives Barbara a love theme that pervades the score, developing alongside her feelings for Holmes; Cooper is granted a Copland-esque theme, spiced up with Spanish guitar, whilst the fish-out-of-water Colman is given a flashy, City Dude theme.
In 2023 Béran conducted the Swiss debut of Brand’s celebrated music for Hitchcock’s silent masterpiece Blackmail at the Locarno Film Festival. 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. On 15 January 2026 Frank Strobel will conduct the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg – one of the great silent film orchestras of the world – in the national debut of the score at the Philharmonie.