"People ask me a␣erwards: 'Was that the music for the film?' I say: 'No, I haven't seen the film, I was just improvising'," says Hilde Nash, who is accompanying Cinematek ́s Slapstick & Comedy series, also featuring movies staring Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, alongside less well-known comics, such as flapper Colleen Moore.
To call it "just improvising" is rather modest. Apart from a two-line summary to tell her what the film is about, Nash, one of the seven pianists who play at the Cinematek's daily silent film screenings, has only her experience to fall back on when the lights go down.
"You have certain techniques, colours, chords and rhythms," she explains. "You have certain patterns that come again, but most of all you have to have a gut feeling of trust."
Nash has been accompanying films for a little over eight years, beginning in her hometown of Antwerp. "I'd finished my studies and was wondering what I was going to do, hopefully as a music therapist but also as a musician," she recalls. "One day I walked into the film museum in Antwerp and asked if they needed any more pianists."
They said yes, and after a short audition she was taken on. "I still play in Antwerp, but they don't do many silent movies. At the Cinematek they do silent movies every day, and now I play here four or five times a month."
With their quick-fire gags and manic pacing, the latest series of movies demands close attention from the pianist. "With slapstick, you try to stay very close to the picture," Nash says. "You can see the jokes coming most of the time, and you try to react to what is happening."
Her playing has classical rather than jazz roots. "I'm influenced by my classical studies, for instance how you use chords and how you go to a crescendo and bring it down again," she explains.
And when she is accompanying a film for the second or third time, she says she is able to add more depth to the music.
"You know more of the story, and maybe you can reflect the psychology of the characters," she says. "You can do more with themes and rhythms. Perhaps the listener doesn't hear it, but for myself, I know I can give more if I know the story."
For listeners, this extra dimension is clear with the more famous performers. "With Charlie Chaplin there is always a melancholy in his films, and I try to let that come out in the music, whereas with Laurel and Hardy, it is totally different. It is real slapstick and really happy music.
How the audience behaves is also a factor. People coming in late can be a distraction, while general hilarity can push a performance along. Nash says her main focus, however, is the screen. "I'm aware that the audience is there, but I'm nearly inside the movie. Sometimes I even move with the characters."
Even for films that have not aged so well, accompanying them is rewarding. "It helps, of course, if it's a good film. Sometimes, when they are a bit boring, you think: I can't save the film, I'm sorry! But even then it's a challenge to make a painting, to bring out colours with the music. I love it."
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