The American Film Institute selected Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times as a cinematic milestone in its list of 100 films of the 20th century. Chaplin’s music didn’t make the AFI’s much shorter list of 25 significant film scores, but it is well deserving of this newly released 2006 recording conducted by Timothy Brock, who also restored the score for performance on this CD by the North German Radio Philharmonic. By any standards theirs is a fine achievement, matching in speed and precision as well as eloquence the original soundtrack conducted by Alfred Newman, no less. The film’s most celebrated sequence, where Chaplin’s Little Tramp is sucked into the wheels of a factory machine, contains multiple changes of tempo and bar lengths as well as numerous points of synchronisation where the music has to proceed with pinpoint accuracy.

David Raksin, the film’s original orchestrator, alongside Edward Powell, recalled that he had to turn Chaplin’s prolific humming into a score of 80 minutes to accompany this silent film. The scoring is light on its feet, shifting seamlessly from one situation to another. Chaplin produced a wealth of tunes to accompany the action but it’s on the track ‘Chance Meeting’ that we first hear the film’s big theme, ‘Smile’, a title it was given in 1954 when a lyric (not by Chaplin) was added; the strings of the NDR Philharmonic relish this appealing theme wholeheartedly. ‘Titina’, a song that is heard in the film performed by Chaplin (who forgets the words), is played as an instrumental. Deft sequencing of the music gives continuity to the listening, not always an attribute of this genre.