november-2011

ACROSS THE WATER from Berlin’s Museum Island, the audience
at the Zeughauskino waits for the lights to dim. A man in a red
velvet jacket rises from the front row, crosses toward the grand
piano underneath the movie screen and sits down. The theater
goes dark, the fi lm starts, the man looks up at the screen and he
begins to play.
The fi lm is Frau im Mond (“Woman in the Moon”), a 1929 silent
sci-fi classic by Austrian master Fritz Lang. It’s one that the cinephiles
in the seats know and love, but that isn’t the only draw: The
man at the piano is Carsten-Stephan Graf von Bothmer, and he’s no
ordinary fi lm accompanist, as evidenced by his lack of sheet music.
Von Bothmer has improvised music for hundreds of silent fi lms,
his favorite being Lang’s futuristic masterwork, Metropolis, which
he’s done 35 times. A decade ago, von Bothmer, who studied piano
ILLUSTRATIONS BY PETER OUMANSKI
DISPATCHES
BERLIN
Silent Treatment
Classic fi lms of yesteryear (along with the odd sporting event)
get a new sound BY GIULIA PINES
at the Universität der Künste (University of the Arts) in Berlin, was
asked by a theater manager to score the fi lm. A er failing to write
music to his own satisfaction, von Bothmer improvised a performance
that enthralled the audience and launched his new career.
One of his most talked-about performances was at Berlin’s
Emmaus Church in July last year, during the fi nal four games
of the World Cup. He improvised a commentary on the games’
action using the church organ, throwing in familiar riff s such as
“The Imperial March” from Star Wars. The fans, he says, “had never
experienced a game so intensely before.”
Although no such feats are planned for the immediate future,
von Bothmer recently returned from a tour of South America
and a performance in the Philippines. So which fi lm will get his
treatment next? “I’d really love to do The Lord of the Rings,” he says.
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM • NOVEMBER 2011 21