“While the sea presents to my eyes a dissolving view, the mountains seem to me a concentrated world,” wrote Claude Lévi-Strauss in  Tristes Tropiques, trying to justify his love of mountainous landscape. George Mallory explained his desire to climb Mount Everest with a short: “Because it is there.” Human fascination with mountains is also explored in The Mountain, directed by Jennifer Peedom. In the film, the soundtrack recorded by Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra under his direction plays an equally important role as the story narrated by Willem Dafoe.

The artists’ visit to the NFM will be an opportunity to watch the 2017 documentary with live music. It is safe to say that when building the soundtrack, Richard Tognetti also created a concentrated, eclectic collection. Like the best climbers, he demonstrated audacity and a sense of balance. Although mountain tourism was invented only in the late Enlightenment, the artist reached back into the past, all the way to the music of the Baroque masters. The most spectacular shots by Renan Öztürk – a specialist in filming in difficult terrain – are therefore accompanied by concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. At the time when they were made, voluntary trips to the mountains were considered a dangerous eccentricity. We will hear echoes of Baroque music in the Suite in Old Style op. 40, “Aus Holberg Zeit”.

The menacing beauty captured by the filmmakers will harmonise with the compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven and Frederic Chopin. There is also no shortage of contemporary music in Te Mountain. These are not only Tognetti’s original works. The breathtaking arpeggios from Arvo Pärt’s Fratres accompany the equally incredible feats of skiers recorded by the cameras. During the screening, we will also hear his famous Für Alina, which has a much more contemplative character. The Djilile by one of the most important Australian composers – Peter Sculthorpe – will also be performed. It will remain a mystery whether the artist, who died in 2014, would have approved of the use of his work in a film devoted to the mountains. He believed in the influence that landscape conditions have on creative work and claimed that his achievements, as an Australian, are connected with the landscape of the continent he came from. The nature of the antipodes, dominated by deserts and plains, was supposed to make the music created there uniform, monochromatic. The mountain ranges, on the other hand, would determine the contrast-saturated oeuvre of European composers raised in their shadow. Jennifer Peedom’s film shows not only the multitude of connections between music and the mountains, but also expresses the emotions that nature and art can evoke in each of us.