Silent film accompaniment is a highly specialised and rare skill, with an estimate of just 50 pianists in the world practicing the art. Acclaimed classical pianist and composer Costas Fotopoulos showcases this most unique branch of piano playing as he provides a fully improvised accompaniment to a screening of L'Inferno (1911), a groundbreaking masterpiece representing the beginning of Italian cinema.
About the film:
The Italian epic came of age with Giuseppe de Liguoro's imaginative silent version of the Inferno, loosely adapted from Dante and inspired by the illustrations of Gustav Doré.L'Inferno was first screened in Naples in the Teatro Mercadante March 10, 1911. The film took over three years to make involving more than 150 people and was the first full length Italian feature film ever made. It's success was not confined to Italy it was an international hit taking more than $2 million in the United States alone.
About the performer:
Costas Fotopoulos is based in London and has worked internationally as a concert and silent film pianist, and as a composer and arranger for film, the stage and the concert hall. He regularly provides live improvisations to silent films at BFI Southbank, which have included numerous films screened at the London Film Festival over the years. Costas has accompanied silents at major British venues such as the Barbican Centre and the Prince Charles Cinema, having also regularly performed at the Kennington Bioscope (both at the Cinema Museum and online) and with Jeremy Brooker for several Magic Lantern Shows. In 2012 Costas composed a piano score for the modern silent film, The Projectionist, which received its successful premiere screening at BFI Southbank in October 2012. Abroad, he has accompanied films at the Walter Reade Theater in New York, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in northern Italy and at other film and piano festivals in Poland and Greece. As a concert pianist, Costas has given many solo and chamber performances in this country as well as in Austria, Italy, Greece, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Nigeria. His acclaimed debut solo piano album was released in February 2009 under the JCL Records label, and features works by Rachmaninov as well as his own Toccata, which he has also recorded for YouTube and performed internationally. He has recorded repertoire for BBC Radio, as well as the piano solo work, Cross hands, for a CD of music by British composer Nicholas Sackman, released on the Metier label. Since 2021 he has been playing Keyboard 1 as a member of the orchestra in the West-End production of The Phantom of the Opera, and since 2018 he has been Music Director of the Christmas stage show, The Snowman, in London and across the UK. (www.costasfotopoulos.com)