Orchestra to provide score for Chaplin film ‘City Lights’

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

It will be 1931 all over again Saturday for the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra’s concert at Powers Auditorium.

The YSO will provide the score as the classic 1931 silent Charlie Chaplin film “City Lights” is screened.

Before the show, items from the theater, which opened as a movie house in 1931, will be on exhibit.

Tickets are available at the DeYor Performing Arts Center box office, by calling 330-744-0264, and online at youngstownsymphony.com. Music Director Randall Craig Fleischer will conduct.

Chaplin wrote the score with the help of a musical arranger; he knew exactly what he wanted in terms of instrumentation and rhythm even though he could not write music.

For “City Lights,” Chaplin hummed, and Arthur Johnston wrote the score. These original scores and parts needed extensive restoration in order to be available for modern-day orchestras to perform at live screenings, such as the one to be presented by YSO. Some parts were missing and had to be rewritten. The score for “City Lights” was restored by Timothy Brock.

Saturday’s concert also will include Mozart’s Prague Symphony (Symphony in D major, No. 38) written for an all-Mozart concert in Prague. The premiere was said to have been met by such an enthusiastic response that the audience would not be quieted until Mozart responded with improvisations at the piano.

The evening will begin at 7 p.m. with a performance by the Youngstown Symphony Symphonette.

The group of middle-school string players, directed by Michelle Prokop and accompanied by pianist Karen Fisher and percussionist Nico Ruggieri, will perform from the classic Handel’s “The Entrance of the Queen of Sheba” and Bach’s Brandenburg No. 5, as well as popular music selections from “Train to Glory,” “Secret Agent Man” and “Storm the Gates.”

Local television weather forecaster Rich Morgan will greet patrons in the Grand Lobby of Powers before the show. An exhibit of items from the auditorium when it was known as the Warner Brothers Theater will be on display. The exhibit, curated by the Mahoning Valley Historical Society, includes film paraphernalia, original spotlights and theater seats, clothing worn by the theater ushers and programs from the opening of the theater on May 14, 1931.