Manuel Göttsching: Pays tribute to Willy Sommerfeld
German composer and pioneer of electronic music Manuel Göttsching will perform during the Berlin International Film Festival in a tribute to Pianist Willy Sommerfeld. Only months after the widely applauded release of the movie “The Sounds of Silents” (which Manuel Göttsching produced and his wife Ilona Ziok directed), Willy Sommerfeld died at the age of 103 in December of last year. The event will now pay hommage to a man who had accompanied the music business from its infant days right into the 21st century. Sommerfeld was a silent movie Pianist, whose career started in the 1920s and who has continued playing in movie theatres, when silent movies had been sized down to a niche genre followed by a cult following. The suprising resurrection of the genre in the past decade has been particularly attributed to his restless efforts – Willy Sommerfeld simply never stopped playing.
The In-Memoriam-Event at the Berlinale will be composed of a screening of “The Sounds of Silents”, as well as a concert of Manuel Göttsching accompanying the classic film “The Haunted Castle (Schloss Vogelöd)” by W.F. Murnau. Conceptually, therefore, the performance will present a historical panopticum of Silent Movie-Music, beginning with Sommerfeld’s earliest days and leading right up to the computer improvisations by Göttsching.
In the wake of the concert, the Goethe Institut will release a DVD containing a version of “The Haunted Castle” with Manuel’s soundtrack. A CD edit of that score, which also included a string- and wind-section, had already been released in 2005. With the publication of the DVD, therefore, it will now be available in its entirety for the first time ever.
The exact date of the Willy Sommerfeld tribute will be announced this week on Manuel Göttsching’s homepage.
Picture by Kim Jin-hee. Copyright MG. ART 2007.
Homepage: Manuel Göttsching
Homepage: Willy Sommerfeld/The Sounds of Silents
Homepage: Berlinale
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