Marin Alsop Leads BSO in Music from Chaplin's 'Modern Times,' 5/10-12

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) Music Director Marin Alsop leads the BSO in a performance of Charlie Chaplin's cinematic masterpiece Modern Times on Friday, May 10 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 12 at 3 p.m. at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, and Saturday, May 11 at 8 p.m. at the Music Center at Strathmore. This presentation builds upon the BSO's success of pairing Chaplin's famed films with his original scores, including past performances of The Gold Rush and City Lights. Modern Times is a satirical take on the machine age and is considered to be one of Chaplin's greatest cinematic and musical works. Please see below for complete program details.

Charlie Chaplin's satirical treasure, Modern Times, premiered in 1936 when the film's critique of industrialization was particularly poignant in addressing the poverty and social unrest rampant during the Great Depression. The movie features one of the silver screen's most memorable characters, Chaplin's beloved Little Tramp, in what many consider to be his very best performance. The Little Tramp plays a factory worker overwhelmed by the demands of the machines, police and harshness of the mechanical world surrounding him. Chaplin himself felt that "machinery should benefit mankind. It should not spell tragedy and throw it out of work." With his usual brilliance, Chaplin spun this serious warning about industrialization into a witty and biting comedy, which portrayed the atrocious conditions of the machine age through the Little Tramp's ever-amusing mishaps and gags.

Ironically, the film marks Chaplin's own transition into modern times as it was his last silent film and the final performance for the Little Tramp. By the mid-1930s, a new era of sound films was ushered in and Chaplin felt pressured to leave his silent films, and the Little Tramp, behind. Thus, Modern Times is a key moment for both Chaplin's career and the world of film, and it provides the perfect stage for the Little Tramp to take his final bow.

Although Chaplin was hesitant to move into the realm of sound films, as an avid music lover he eagerly embraced using sound technology to compose scores for his films. The music that Chaplin composed for Modern Times is regarded as his finest and most innovative work, and Chaplin's perfectionist spirit led him to create a score that "was so moment specific, so tightly synchronized, that one can nearly follow a Chaplin film by only hearing its score without the benefit of the image."