In the organizer's words:

Karl Bartos: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Robert Wiene's silent film classic from 1920 with new film music, composed and performed by ex-Kraftwerk musician Karl Bartos

"Big bang of pop culture" (Süddeutsche Zeitung): "Kraftwerk" legend Karl Bartos has re-scored "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". The silent film classic by Robert Wiene from 1920 is considered an expressionist masterpiece and is also the first ever psychological thriller.

The electro pioneer Bartos has tailored a new, experimentally interpreted soundtrack for it, inventing a code that translates the cinematic work of art into the here and now. After the premiere in February 2024, the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote: "A firecracker that makes the Alte Oper in Frankfurt shake."

Bartos and his partner Mathias Black play and control his film music in sync with the film version in 4K resolution, which has been restored by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation. The most important means of expression is the timeless sound of the orchestra, synthetically produced and electronically modulated. We hear melodies in the Bach tradition of the Baroque era and the early Romanticism of Mozart, but also dissonances by Arnold Schönberg and the metrical playing of Igor Stravinsky and Philip Glass. Outside the classical tradition, there are the folksy bricolage sounds of the barrel organ at the fair, lapel tape effects and sounds that would fit in perfectly with a Kraftwerk album from the classical era.