Last year, I was sitting in TIFF's bar with Dusseldorf composer Volker Bertelmann, chatting about the upcoming world premiere of his just
Oscar-submitted film All Quiet On The Western Front at the Royal Alexandra Theatre a few days later. Previously nominated for the adoption drama
Lion, I next saw Volker on stage at the Dolby Theatre in L.A. in March 2023 as he accepted his Academy Award for
Best Original Score -- one of four Oscars Edward Berger's hard-hitting (anti-)war drama received, including Best Film. Composers and musicians out of Germany have see our series The Sound of Filmmusik in 2020, featuring over a dozen influential from Hans Zimmer to Dascha Dauenhauer (Golda; Berlin Alexanderplatz).
Often with three or more international productions in the works alongside his busy touring schedule as a sought-after live performer, my first thought when TIFF announces their line-up is "Let me check what Volker has in the festival." For the 48th TIFF,
Bertelmann has scored James Hawes' world premiering UK drama One Life starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as Sir Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker who helped rescue hundreds of children from Europe on the verge of the Second World War.
Volker Bertelmann, also known as Hauschka when he performs on his prepared piano, is a
composer and experimental musician. In 2018, he signed a record deal with Sony Masterworks and released his first record on the label in 2019. In 2016, Bertelmann had collaborated with Dustin O'Halloran on the score for Garth Davis' TIFF film Lion, which was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for Best Original Score. Since then, he has gone on to score dozens of film and TV projects, among then Baltasar Kormákur's Adrift, the HBO mini-series Gunpowder and Showtime's Emmy-nominated TV series Patrick Melrose. Bertelmann teamed up with O'Halloran again on the scores for The Art of Racing in the Rain, Ammonite, and The Old Guard. He worked on Run Lola Run star Franka Potente's English-language film debut Home, the sci-fi thriller Stoaway, The Space Between, War Sailor and Memory of Water. This year, he has already been in theatres with two films, Jules and One for the Road. Director Maximilian Erlenwein's (
Stereo) thriller The Dive is about to be released; Oliver Hirschbiegel's (The Experiment) new Sky TV series Unwanted is in production; and Edward Berger's next project, the Robert Harris book adaptation Conclave, is in post-production.
Bertelmann is not the only German composer at TIFF this year as he is joined by his Berlin colleague Yair Elazar Glotman, who he worked with on All Quiet On The Western Front. Glotman has been invited to Toronto with the world premiere of Grant Singer's US noir Reptile, starring Benicio del Toro, Justin Timberlake, and Alicia Silverstone.
Yair Glotman is a composer and a musician trained in classical music as an orchestral contrabass player and in electroacoustic composition. As a film composer, he has collaborated on two Oscar-winning soundtracks -- Joker and All Quiet on the Western Front. Glotman’s compositions for film and media began through his close work with the influential, late Berlin-based Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, most notably writing additional music for Mandy and co-composing Last and First Men. Glotman scored the A24 production False Positive together with cellist Lucy Railton. He has worked with composers
Hildur Guðnadóttir (Women Talking, Tar, Joker, Chernobyl, Sicario), Volker Bertelmann, Ben Frost, Chris Clark, Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury, Dustin O'Halloran, and others. In addition to film and TV, he has composed for dance performances and Opera, most notably designing the Soundtrack for the Royal Opera House in London’s production Mamzer (2018) by Na'ama Zisser.
Alongside his work for film, Glotman regularly releases and performs his own music, under his own name as well as under projects such as KETEV and collaborations with composers Mats Erlandsson and Viktor Orri Árnason. He has played at venues around the world, including MaerzMusik, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Volksbühne, CTM Festival, Steirischer Herbst and Atonal Festival.
by
Jutta Brendemühl
image: Jutta Brendemuhl
