Saturday Night Randomry

I ran across my dusty copy of this Kronos Quartet CD a day or so ago, prompting me to use the Youtubes to see if anyone had posted a visual.

Tada.

Some background:

In 1999 Philip Glass composed a new score for the 1931 classic Dracula. The evidence of his considerable genius being the decisions to (a) use only a string quartet (b) engage the services of Kronos Quartet to bring the music to life even as so many lose (not all permanently, however) theirs. The result brings a whole new meaning to “Death and the Maiden” and provides considerable pleasure to movie lover and concertgoer alike.

Glass opts for colours rather than themes in this post-modern melodramatic rendering, chock-a-block full of Alberti basses. Arpeggios signal the entry of the living dead; the horse drawn carriage gallops across the screen with an undercurrent of syncopation that harkens back to Mozart’s first G Minor Symphony (No. 25, K. 183); the sinister viola helps the weary traveler, Renfield (played with a very fine madness by Dwight Frye), up the Transylvanian steps even as his host declaims “The children of the night [wolves howling], what music they make!” All of which contributes to director Ted Browning’s marvellous tone of restrained horror and stylish after life.