05/07/2011

The British Film Institute (BFI) is bringing Alfred Hitchcock’s early, rarely seen, film masterpieces to a new audience as part of the London 2012 Festival next summer, the finale of the Cultural Olympiad, a component of the London Olympics.

The silent films will be accompanied by newly commissioned orchestral music scores from British composers including Nitin Sawhney (The Namesake), Tansy Davies and Daniel Cohen. Sawhney will write a new score for The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1926) to be performed by him with the London Symphony Orchestra, commissioned by independent film distributor Network Releasing in partnership with the BFI.

Sawhney said, “This is a dream project for me. Bernard Herrmann is one of my great musical heroes. It would be honour enough to follow in Herrmann’s footsteps but to actually score a film that precedes his musical genius is a wonderful opportunity for creative imagination and invention. Hitchcock is a director whose shadow any composer would be proud to stand in.”

Cohen will undertake a new score for Hitchcock’s first feature The Pleasure Garden (1925), to be performed by the Academy Manson Ensemble from the Royal Academy of Music.

Cohen said, “The first time I saw a Hitchcock film was in the sixth form - by the end of the day I’d seen three, The Lady Vanishes, The 39 Steps and North by Northwest. The last of the three, with its astonishing Bernard Herrmann score, later became the single most important inspiration for me to write music for films.”

Davie’ commission will be announced soon. Restoration for both The Lodger and The Pleasure Garden is made possible with the assistance of ITV Studios Global Entertainment who is the rights owner of both films.