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17 April 2025 Hamburg (Germany)
Film Concert: Charlie Chaplin: »Modern Times«
Symphoniker Hamburg conducted by Stefanos Tsialis - Laeiszhalle, Großer Saal
Program Info: Charles Chaplin - Modern Times
It's all so heartbreakingly tragicomic, tears roll alternately from laughter and tears. An hour and a half of surprise through images and sounds, so lovingly everyday, so not worth mentioning: No, he is still mute, the tramp, even though sound films have long since conquered the screen. Words are used as sounds. A big exception is Léo Daniderff's hit "Titina", which the protagonist sings towards the end of the film "Modern Times". A chanson that is so important simply because the world was able to hear the little tramp's voice for the first time in 1936: Chaplin sings!
It is the eternal search for one, for one's little bit of happiness, to be able to find a "normal" life: the same challenge in the great Chaplin cinema as in the absurd theatre of today's "modern times". The machines, all the confusing surroundings, most of the people around him don't understand what he means - after all, he can't speak! Dances, contorts, gestures, looks full of longing, tears roll down. In the end he runs away, but is really lucky and finds the woman of his dreams beforehand. So they go into the distance, as a couple, into the dreamland behind the horizon - no other final image in film history has left such a timeless human engraving... "Smile"!
Chaplin's yes to life was always rooted in laughter. And since his life was film, music was at the root of his passion. He was fascinated by the sound of the orchestra: "Nothing is more exciting than hearing a self-composed melody played for the first time by a 50-piece orchestra." And so the little man, who could play the violin and cello quite well, conquered sheet music could neither read nor write, little by little the entire score of the film music: from the idea to the conducting in the studio. The highlight was the complex, innovative music for “Modern Times”, with an almost 70-piece orchestra – all composed, put together and conducted in the studio!
Here in Hamburg, Stefanos Tsialis, long-time director of the Athens State Orchestra and an expert in Chaplin music, takes over as permanent guest conductor of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, which has a long tradition of film concerts ("Modern Times" was last performed in the Laeiszhalle in February 2017). , This task. How crazy such an undertaking is is demonstrated by the most precise instructions for how dozens of tempo changes and synchronisation points must be achieved precisely within a sequence of just a few bars so that the music can exactly imitate the movements of the actors and actions - especially since Chaplin's music is focused on the moment was tailored and synchronised so precisely that we can almost “see” the film just by listening to the music. Stefanos Tsialis knows both the film and the music by heart.
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