Premiered in 1926, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s silent film was one of the most expensive productions of its time and featured a wealth of novel technical solutions. ‘The Faust film is magical. Goethe got to know the myth of Faust in a puppet theatre. There is a long way from the primitive tale of the puppet show to Goethe’s tragedy, but the journey does not end there. The sequel is: the Faust film,’ wrote the reviewer of Színházi Élet in 1926. The plot only partly follows Goethe’s classic, with some of the turns borrowed from the German folk tradition of the legend of Faust. The original music of this monumental piece of cinema, written by Werner Richard Heymann, a very popular composer of his time, was followed by many other versions over time. László Fassang will connect to the film by improvising on Müpa Budapest’s majestic instrument. Though ‘the screen is still – it is not influenced by the music – it is still possible to make the impression that the music sets off certain processes,’ says Fassang, who is at once composer, performer and conductor of the music. Like the ‘cinema organists’ of yore, he too draws on the classics, and at this opening concert of the Liszt Fest, he will cite the revolutionary Faust Symphony, one of the composer’s most important works.

Presented by: Müpa Budapest