Organist David Briggs to improvise to silent film
David Briggs / Courtesy of Lotte Concert Hall
By Yun Suh-young
Renowned organist David Briggs will stage a live performance played to a silent classic film in his first Seoul concert next week.
The performance will be held at the Lotte Concert Hall in Jamsil, eastern Seoul, Nov. 26 at 2 p.m. Briggs will play music for the silent film “Phantom of the Opera” (1925) which will be screened. Briggs is known for his improvised organ performances to silent films, such as “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “Nosferatu,” “Jeanne d’Arc” and “Metropolis” as well as various works by Charlie Chaplin.
Briggs is renowned for his organ arrangements of various symphonies by Mahler, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Elgar, Bruckner, Ravel and Bach. He had been fascinated by improvising organ music accompanying silent films since he was young.
The Briggs performance is the second film event introduced by the concert hall since its first on Nov. 4 with a martial arts film. The performance was met with rave reviews from critics who said that it allowed the movie to “breathe alive” with live music instead of the music being a subsidiary part of the movie. This time, the movie will be shown on a large screen along with the live organ music playing in the background.
Phantom of the Opera is a film based on a novel released in 1910 by Gaston Leroux. The 1925 film featuring Lon Chaney was even better received than the novel. It was made into a musical in 1986 by Andrew Lloyd Webber and a musical film in 2004. The story is about a composer who is known as “Phantom” who lives in an opera house in Paris and falls in love with singer Christine and abducts her in an attempt to get her to love him. However, Christine is frightened by him after seeing his gruesome face and tries to escape.
Briggs intends to play the music to maximize the emotions portrayed in the film, reenacting the scene where the Phantom plays the organ in the basement of the Paris opera house.
Briggs received a degree from the Royal College of Organists at the age of 17 and won an improvisation prize at the noted St. Alban's International Organ Competition. He studied at King’s College, Cambridge, from 1981 to 1984 and won the first prize at the Paisley International Organ Festival. He is now a resident artist at St. James Cathedral in Toronto, Canada, and teaches at Cambridge University in London. He is also a composer and has released over 30 CDs and DVDs of his work.