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For the love of silent cinema
French musician-composer Robert Piéchaud (53) is in Pune for his project of cine concert using Indian silent films that are with NFAI
Pune: French musician-composer Robert Piéchaud (53) is in love with the medium of film as much as music. He is a pupil of Claude Helffer (piano), Gilles Harlé (organ) and Charles Bornstein (orchestration), and regularly performs in recitals and often includes his own compositions in Paris, although he writes mainly for chamber ensembles, for voice and piano. His passion about silent cinema (he loves the works of Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, Linder, Mizoguchi or Ozu) finds him performing in film concerts at the Louvre Auditorium every year since 2014, and at the Cinémathèque Française and other places in France.
“Silent films have so much to tell us; they can make you laugh, enjoy the feeling of reliving an era,” said Robert, who is into cine concerts — performing live music on silent film. The music can be either scored, or fully improvised.
“Being passionate about silent films and music, binding the two was a natural thing to do. My vision to performing live music on a silent film could be described as a renewed dialogue over time, space or culture. The improvisatory of the music makes it (by essence!) very spontaneous, risk-taking, never boring, and different every time, even for a same programme,” said Robert.
Robert is in Pune for his new project of cine concert using Indian silent films that are with the National Film Archive of India (NFAI). His project is in collaboration with Alliance Francaise in India and funded by French Institute in India.
“I came here with a pre-conceived idea of silent films being all about mythology and devotion, but instead found that they are very interesting, some even funny and light headed,” said Robert, who first fell in love with Buster Keaton’s silent film, “The General”.
“My son Aliocha, who was 3 or 4 years old at that time, was a fan, and that encouraged me to attempt live music on silent films. And it happens to be the first film I ever accompanied (it was in Paris, in 2007),” he said.
“It is a big risk that I am attempting to do here. Yes, I have experience of performing live for silent films of Buster Keaton and Charles Chaplin in Europe for more than ten years, but here it is for the first time that I am trying to perform and improvise for the silent films made in India,” he said.
Robert came up with the idea of the project (“Cine concerts in India”) when he visited Pune for the first time two years ago as an assistant to musician Floy Krouchi. Since 2012, Krouchi has been working on the bass augmented by electronics through her project “Bass Holograms” in collaboration with national centre for musical creation (Cesare-cncm), for which she composed several concert pieces. She was in Pune for research and performance, a musical encounter between the FKBass, an augmented bass with integrated technology, and the Rudra Veena.
Robert on piano and his colleague Stan de Nussac (saxophone) are bringing music which is not meant to be tried with Indian films. Robert on the classical and new music side, Stan in jazz, it was later that they found the opportunity to collaborate, with the creation of the Trio Trans-Atlantismes (with vocalist Jill Alessandra McCoy) in 2010 where they experimented with forms halfway between writing strict and improvisation, an adventure that will lead them to the stage of the Bouffes du Nord (Festival d’Automne à Paris, 2016). But it is above all thanks to the film-concert that, for ten years, they have been inventing a common language, Robert on the piano and Stan on the wind instruments (saxophones, bass clarinet, flute) between jazz and contemporary music, through improvisation, between East and West, in cinematographic repertoires as varied as Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Mizoguchi or Ozu and in prestigious places such as the Auditorium du Louvre or the Cinémathèque Française.
“The cine concert is planned in several major Indian cities next year after Diwali and will serve as an occasion to exhibit our (Indian) silent film heritage, coupled with varied silent films from France,” said Ravinder Bhakar, managing director, NFDC and director, NFAI.
Robert enjoyed discussing Hindi films like Hindi Murliwalla and Kaliya Mardan a lot. “These films demystify the belief of being completely devotional which had me worried whether I would do justice to them with my kind of compositions, but I find that these films are so touching rather than being pompous and Dadasaheb Phalke’s films are a delight to watch,” he said.
