David Robertson, conducting the San Francisco Symphony this weekend, on Chaplin's score to City Lights:
The overall result is something that feels alive in a way that we have lost with films we see today in the cinema.
Unlike more substantial film scores by Bernstein, Bernard Herrmann or others, this one holds only slight inherent musical interest. But it was often interesting to hear all the same, as a frantic nightclub tango gave way to a becalmed court dance or the saxophones or a castanet added aural color to the black-and-white images.
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