Greta Garbo and Vadim Repin LOVE 1927

War and Peace is nearly at an end (the raunchy BBC TV adaptation, that is). But don’t despair – Tolstoy up your life with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. Hollywood’s hottest ever on-screen couple ™ starred in the sumptuous Anna Karenina adaptation Love (Edmund Goulding, 1927), which is showing at the Royal Festival Hall this month.

Yes, the Royal Festival Hall – with the Philharmonia orchestra (featuring violinist Vadim Repin) playing a brand new score for the film written by Aphrodite Raickopoulou. You may remember that she wrote a very lush, romantic score for a similarly grand screening of Faust a few years back.

The even better news is that tickets for this event now begin at £5 – which is unbeatable value really. This screening is the premiere of the new score and will kick off the 2016 UK-Russia Year of Language and Literature here in London. The film and score will then embark on a world tour, taking in Russia, Japan and South Korea. But you’ll see it here first in London.

​Raickopoulou’s last film score, commissioned for an exclusive screening of Murnau’s 1927 epic ‘Faust’, made its debut at the Royal Festival Hall in 2012. Presented by Hugh Grant, it was described by The Sunday Times as one of the ‘must see’ cinematic event of 2012. Adam Sweeting on the ArtsDesk said: “Performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra, Raickopoulou's sweepingly symphonic writing amplified the dramatic turbulence of Murnau's movie with a passion that would surely have impressed the director himself. This was still film-making of boundary-busting ambition, and now it has a fine new score to go with it".