Orchestra gives “Nosferatu” a voice

On Jan. 30 the Bellaire Orchestra hosted a live film music concert featuring the score from the silent film “Nosferatu”. Nosferatu is a 1922 German Expressionist horror film revolving around the vampire Nosferatu and Count Orlok. The orchestra played the music from the movie in the auditorium to enhance the viewing of the silent film. Senior Annie Shen, vice president of the orchestra, explained the reason behind the event.

“We normally have another fundraiser called Playathon which is 10 hours of nonstop music,” Shen said. “However, we never really had a good turnout for that event so we tried to come up with different ideas. Playing along a silent movie came to mind when our orchestra director said one of her colleagues had done the same before.”

Alexandra Kainer, president of the orchestra, describes the preparation and the difficulty of practicing for the event.

“It was a little hard to get together because it was actually two classes combined for the performance,” Kainer said. “So not only were we in class everyday practicing the piece, we also had weekly after school rehearsals with both classes put together so that we could hear what we needed to fix.”

In her four years as a member of the orchestra, Shen has played at many events, but Nosferatu stands out to her. Shen elaborates on her favorite part of Nosferatu.

“My favorite part of the event was mostly the turnout,” Shen said. “At our normal concerts, disappointingly, we only have parents in the audience. To even have a half full auditorium was quite the treat. Even more, the applause at the end and some of the audience members standing for our performance really provided worth to the amount of time and energy we sacrifice into this form of art.”