Jonny Greenwood plays his There Will Be Blood score live at Meltdown

Jonny Greenwood played the ondes martenot, the early electronic instrument with a keyboard and a ribbon, in his own score for There Will Be Blood at the Royal Festival Hall on Wednesday 19 August, as Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film was shown. More than 50 musicians of the London Contemporary Orchestra played under Hugh Brunt, as part of Meltdown, the Southbank Centre's festival, curated this year by David Byrne.

The orchestra has played Greenwood's music since 2008 and recorded his score for Anderson's The Master in 2012. With Brunt, it first played this one to the film with him at the Roundhouse last August.

The film takes its time: almost 15 minutes pass before anyone really speaks, with only percussion under the opening pictures. Greenwood's ondes martenot, musicOMH's reviewer says, could be heard clearly in the balance.

The score as played gathers the passages from Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver and Bodysong that the film uses, with music by Arvo Pärt and Brahms. Oliver Coates played the cello in Pärt's “Fratres”, heard where H.W., the oilman's adopted son, loses his hearing. Galya Bisengalieva was the soloist in the finale of Brahms's Violin Concerto, which closes the film after the bowling-alley scene.