This performance will feature a live score performed by Hugo Max.

"My viola soundtrack for Battleship Potemkin unfolds with a similar propulsive dread as captured by Francis Bacon in his paintings of the screaming nurse from the infamous Odessa steps sequence. This is Eisenstein's masterwork with a visceral intensity, the daring set-pieces accompanied by angular, percussive melodies." - Hugo Max

Please view this YouTube video for a sample of Hugo's work.


Photo Credit - Richard Ecclestone

When they are fed rancid meat, the sailors on the Potemkin revolt against their harsh conditions. Led by Vakulinchuk (Aleksandr Antonov), the sailors kill the officers of the ship to gain their freedom. Vakulinchuk is also killed, and the people of Odessa honor him as a symbol of revolution. Tsarist soldiers arrive and massacre the civilians to quell the uprising. A squadron of ships is sent to overthrow the Potemkin, but the ships side with the revolt and refuse to attack.

This performance will feature a live score performed by Hugo Max.

"I first saw Murnau’s Symphony of Horror when I was nine years old. The film’s expressionistic images continue to haunt me, the chiaroscuro compositions tapping vividly into timeless subconscious fears.

My improvisations on viola and piano draw inspiration from the leitmotifs and sound effects of 70s horror soundtracks and the languages of Second Viennese School composers contemporary to Murnau, also Jewish Traditional Music that informs my personal approach to creating a score for the film." - Hugo Max

Please view this YouTube video for a sample of Hugo's work.


Photo Credit - Richard Ecclestone

An iconic film of the German expressionist cinema, and one of the most famous of all silent movies, F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror continues to haunt — and, indeed, terrify — modern audiences with the unshakable power of its images. By teasing a host of occult atmospherics out of dilapidated set-pieces and innocuous real-world locations alike, Murnau captured on celluloid the deeply-rooted elements of a waking nightmare, and launched the signature "Murnau-style" that would change cinema history forever.

In this first-ever screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, a simple real-estate transaction leads an intrepid businessman deep into the superstitious heart of Transylvania. There he encounters the otherworldly Count Orlok — portrayed by the legendary Max Schreck, in a performance the very backstory of which has spawned its own mythology — who soon after embarks upon a cross-continental voyage to take up residence in a distant new land... and establish his ambiguous dominion. As to whether the count's campaign against the plague-wracked populace erupts from satanic decree, erotic compulsion, or the simple impulse of survival — that remains, perhaps, the greatest mystery of all in this film that's like a blackout...

This performance will feature a live score performed by Hugo Max.

Viola player and filmmaker Hugo Max presents his fourth UK tour accompanying Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 silent masterwork The Lodger with live score. Packed with the stylistic flourishes and experimental trick shots that would become defining trademarks of Hitchcock’s film language, the third feature by the Master of Suspense is a gripping murder mystery propelled by Ivor Novello’s iconic central performance.

Please view this YouTube video for a sample of Hugo's work.


Photo Credit - Richard Ecclestone

When a landlady (Marie Ault) and her husband (Arthur Chesney) take in a new lodger (Ivor Novello), they're overjoyed: He's quiet, humble and pays a month's rent in advance. But his mysterious and suspicious behaviour soon has them wondering if he's the killer terrorising local blond girls. Their daughter, Daisy (June), a cocky model, is far less concerned, her attraction obvious. Her police-detective boyfriend (Malcolm Keen), in a pique of jealousy, seeks to uncover the lodger's true identity.

Website: https://hugomax.co.uk/scoring-silent-cinema