Sebastian Heindl: Nosferatu

German organist Sebastian Heindl creates an improvised soundtrack to 1922 silent horror film, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror.

A German expressionist classic, F W Murnau’s Nosferatu is the earliest surviving adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Despite attempts to have it destroyed due to copyright infringement, the film became a landmark of the genre and one that ‘helped invent a whole vocabulary of thriller storytelling’ (Guardian).

If the ghastly Count and his creeping shadow weren’t enough to make your spine tingle, Heindl dials up the suspense with an entirely original, improvised soundtrack for organ – an instrument that is itself a gothic trope, from Bach’s thundering Toccata and Fugue in D minor in The Phantom of the Opera to the tormented tunes played by Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean. And who better to lead us into the darkness than an ECHO Rising Star with the power to ‘lift his audience up to Heaven or plunge them into misery’ (Die Zeit).