 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
May 23, 2016 - 10:34 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Howard L
(Member)
|
from today's (print) NY Times--
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Charlie Chaplin confronted a creative crisis in the late 1920s when sound came to film. He still had faith in the aesthetics of silent movies and rightly considered himself a master of pantomime.
But the challenge brought one advantage: He could finally compose his own film scores. His first was for his 1931 masterpiece, “City Lights,” which, as usual, he also wrote, directed and starred in. On Thursday night, the New York Philharmonic screened that classic at David Geffen Hall with the orchestra playing Chaplin’s elegant, stylish music live, conducted by Timothy Brock, who meticulously restored the score as part of his work with Chaplin’s heirs.
Two years ago, the Philharmonic presented Chaplin’s “Modern Times” (1936), also performing Mr. Brock’s restored version of Chaplin’s rich original score. “City Lights” was an even greater revelation.
For its current venture into film music, the Philharmonic also presented Disney’s “Fantasia: Live in Concert,” with Joshua Gersen, an excellent assistant conductor at the Philharmonic, leading the works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and other composers that inspired that film’s animations. For the last of three screenings on Saturday night the audience included lots of children who laughed when they saw Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer’s hapless apprentice in Dukas’s wonderful tone poem, and giggled at all the elephants and hippos doing ballet turns to Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours.”
Chaplin would have been thrilled to hear the Philharmonic’s plush, sensitive playing of his “City Lights” score. In this tale, Chaplin’s homeless tramp chances upon a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) who sells flowers on the street and lives in near poverty with her grandmother. The girl mistakenly assumes he is a wealthy gentleman. Completely smitten, the tramp tries to maintain her illusion. All his hilarious misadventures are motivated by a determination to help her.
Though there is no spoken dialogue, there are some comic sound effects. But the intricate, continuous orchestra score is crucial to the drama. Chaplin did not read music, but he played several instruments and had broad musical tastes. This score was a team effort composed over six weeks, with Chaplin conveying his specific ideas to Arthur Johnson, a musical arranger, and the musical director Alfred Newman (who would go on to be a towering film score composer).
During rollicking segments, the music has touches of British music hall and brassy Gershwin. Mostly, though, Chaplin composed graceful, affecting music to draw out the emotional dimensions and sentiment of this poignant story, however comedic on the surface.
For this “Fantasia,” segments from the original 1940 film were shown along with a few from the “Fantasia 2000” sequel. For the original, the Philadelphia Orchestra recorded the works under Leopold Stokowski. The Philharmonic played beautifully here, though Mr. Gersen had to hew to the tempos Stokowski took, since the animation was synced to them. This included the slowest imaginable version of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”
The “Fantasia 2000” segments seem dramatically forced, less magical, especially one based on Noah’s Ark with Donald Duck as Noah’s assistant, which, for me, is mismatched to Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” marches. Still, children throughout the hall seemed enthralled, and the orchestra sounded great.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thanks! I was just going to post a link to this, but you, with your three-hour advantage, did even better of course by posting the piece itself. You're going to have to teach me how to do that some time, Howard.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
