Ravinia 2019, Issue 6, Week 11

Philippe Quint brings Chaplin’s music to modern times with a smile VIOLINIST PHILIPPE QUINT has been listening to the music of Charlie Chaplin since he was a lad in the Soviet Union. “He was a superstar all over the world,” he said of the London-born composer who wrote hundreds of songs, multiple film scores, and directed and starred in his own films. The silent era was the perfect vehicle for his slender frame and flexible face. His characters, such as the Little Tramp and the Great Dictator, moved from pathos to power and moved audiences from laughter to tears. Chaplin was born 130 years ago, and to mark that anniversary, Quint has recorded an album of violin and piano arrangements of Chaplin’s music, titled after—what else?—“Smile,” surely his most memorable and beloved song, a staple across generations and genres, in habited by the likes of Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Michael Jackson, Pláci- do Domingo, and even fellow violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. Quint’s collabora- tor on the recording is Chicago native and multi Grammy nominated pianist Marta Aznavoorian, a founding member of the popular Lincoln Trio. Quint remembers seeing Chaplin’s films and even dressing up as Chaplin when he was a child. He came to the United States in 1991 to study at The Juilliard School and is now an American citizen. But it was only three years ago that he began researching the com- poser’s music. By his reckoning, it was sparked when he heard again the poi- gnant and beautiful melody of “Smile.” “The melody of ‘Smile’ was used in his film Modern Times in 1936,” Quint notes. “Lyrics were only added in 1954.” The more he learned, the more his admira- tion grew. “I became aware of his gift, his genius.” Like his pianist partner, Quint has also earned multiple Grammy nomina- tions—it remains to be seen if the pair will notch another with the new CD, Chaplin’s Smile , released in January, but with notices such as Classic FM’s asser- tion that “Quint seems to have struck the perfect balance of finding Chaplin’s robust charm while keeping an ev- er-present romantic tone,” it’s surely on the radar. The album marked his debut on the venerable Warner Classics label, but he has another disc in the works on the Hyperion label as part of his 2018/19 season as Artist-in-Association with the Utah Symphony, which included two weeks of performances. However, a major thrust of Quint’s schedule this summer and into the next concert season is, of course, live presentations of the Chaplin project in a vaudevillian multimedia performance guise with film clips, photos, and stories interspersed with the music of Chap- lin and the fascinating encounters and friendships Chaplin had with the great composers of his day, including Debussy, Stravinsky, and Gershwin. In addition to their August 21 appearance in Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall, Quint and Az- navoorian have taken the “Charlie Chap- lin’s Smile” project to Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Boston, Pittsburgh, Berlin, London, Utrecht, and Bilbao in the weeks after the album’s release and most recently to Music in the Mountains in Colorado. Quint and his 1708 “Ruby” Antonio Stradivarius violin, on loan to him through The Stradivari Society, will also bring an orchestral version of the program to Baltimore, Germany, and Poland over the coming year. Whereas the August date marks Quint’s first return to Ravinia following several summer weeks spent as a fellow of Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute in 1997, Aznavoorian has already been ISI AKAHOME AUGUST 12 – AUGUST 25, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 35