Selected to take part in the 2026 NIMAcademy, young composer Edvin Ljubijankic developed this new score under the mentorship of Peyman Yazdanian. Held over a six-month period, this international composition academy invites emerging artists to explore the relationship between contemporary music and the moving image, focusing in particular on questions of form, dramaturgy, synchronisation and instrumental writing specific to live film performance.

Written for violin and piano, The Fall of the House of Usher accompanies an excerpt from Jean Epstein’s 1928 silent film. Its premiere marks the culmination of a creative process developed in dialogue with the mentor and the performers of Ensemble Métis.

For his adaptation, Epstein drew not only on Edgar Allan Poe’s story of the same name, but also incorporated elements from The Oval Portrait—most notably the motif of an artist who, by painting the person he loves, seems to transfer their life into his work.

Epstein translates Poe’s fantastical atmosphere through distinctly cinematic techniques. Slow motion, superimpositions, fluid camerawork, editing and deliberately unreal sets unset our usual perception of time and space. The narrative thus unfolds as a mysterious and oppressive visual reverie.

Edvin Ljubijankic’s score sets the violin and piano in dialogue with this world. It creates a new encounter between images made almost a century ago and the immediate presence of the two musicians on stage—between the fixed time of film and the living time of performance.