Timothy Brock - Modern Times (Score Restoration by Timothy Brock) (2015)

Charlie Chaplin, one of film historys greatest original geniuses, was also a gifted inventor of melodies and the meticulous musical dramaturge of his films, a fact known by too few. After writing the music for City Lights (1930) he caught the film music bug, going on to compose the music for all his other films. The complex, innovative music for Modern Times (1935), here premiered complete, represents the high point of his compositional career. Although relying on David Raksin for notation and orchestration, almost every measure of the score contains the unmistakable traits of its author.

"The music, all eighty minutes of it, is simply wonderful...The fact that so much music is so enjoyable, that there are no dead spots and very few moments of aimless "mood music," must be due to conductor Timothy Brock, who painstakingly reconstructed the score as it was actually used in the film. Brock has the NDR Radio Philharmonic at the top of its form, and the engineers do themselves proud. If this becomes a series, CPO will really have something. They already do." --David Hurwitz