The organ is like a piano on steroids: most have multiple keyboards, including a large one played by the feet called a pedalboard. Thanks to a system of ranks and stops, the instrument can produce an astonishingly wide range of tone colors and sonorities. Pipe organs are truly monumental in size, scope and especially, sound.
And yet, the organ is rarely heard as a featured solo instrument in major orchestra halls in the U.S., even though most of these halls, ironically, have organs.
Maverick organist Cameron Carpenter is out to change all that. When he comes to Chicago on Halloween, he will play the mighty Casavant Frères organ at Orchestra Hall, utilizing its 44 stops, 59 ranks, 14 couplers and 3,414 pipes to perform his original score to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari during a screening of the silent horror film. Carpenter will be making his Symphony Center debut at this performance.
Audience members are encouraged to come in costume for this special Halloween concert, to be held on Friday, October 31 at 8:00 p.m.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a German Expressionist film directed by Robert Wiene, is considered by many to be the first true horror film. The movie is famous not just for its characters and macabre story but also its unique set design, painted to resemble a dark Expressionist landscape of distorted buildings, leaning walls, skewed windows and jagged edges.
In the midst of this dark, twisted landscape, Francis (Friedrich Fehér) relates a story about an exhibit he and his fiancée once visited, called "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." In the exhibit, Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) wakes a somnambulist, or sleep-walker, Cesare (Conrad Veidt), to predict the future. Cesare's shocking words lead to tragedy and terror.
Carpenter first premiered his film score in 2012 and has since accompanied the film across the U.S. and Europe with screenings in New York, London and San Francisco.
In concert halls across the U.S. and around the world, Carpenter continues to smash the stereotypes associated with organists and organ music. His unorthodox performances include film scores, transcriptions of non-organ music and his own original compositions, in addition to the works of Bach and other organ masters. Carpenter's new album, If You Could Read My Mind, recently reached #1 on the Billboard classical chart.
Here he is playing his own transcription of Leonard Bernstein's Overture to Candide:
More information about Carpenter's Halloween performance at Symphony Center is available at cso.org. This concert is part of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association's "At the Movies" concert series.
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