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Bernard HERRMANN film scores re-recorded by TRIBUTE FILM CLASSICS Bernard HERRMANN (1911-1975) The Kentuckian(1955) Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot (1956)
Moscow Symphony Orchestra/William
T. Stromberg
rec. Mosfilm Studio, Moscow, Russia, November 2007. DDD TRIBUTE FILM CLASSICS
TFC1004 [73:19]
Bernard HERRMANN (1911-1975) Fahrenheit 451 (1966) The Twilight Zone - Walking Distance (1959)
Moscow Symphony Orchestra/William
T. Stromberg
rec. Mosfilm Studio, Moscow, Russia, April 2007. DDD TRIBUTE FILM CLASSICS
TFC1002 [77:40]
Bernard HERRMANN (1911-1975) Mysterious Island (1961)
Moscow Symphony Orchestra/William
T. Stromberg
rec. Mosfilm Studio, Moscow, Russia, April 2007. DDD TRIBUTE FILM CLASSICS
TFC1001 [71:27]
I am indebted to Ian Lace who has already reviewed other volumes
in the series and was kind enough to intercede with Tribute so
that I could review these three Herrmann discs. Do have a look
at his other Tribute reviews.
The advantages of the compact disc medium over the LP are now
seen as axiomatic. In a way it is futile to dwell on them because
the door had slammed irrevocably shut on vinyl by the end of the
1980s. There's no way back now and most people no longer even
consider that there is a 'back' to go to. People in the classical
world will think of LPs only in relation to their dwindling value
as a source for MP3 transfers for which there is a bustling little
market in cheapish turntables, connections and software and perhaps
as a sentimental legacy in the loft or storage.
The black disc did however have one advantage. It was to do with
its size. The 12 inch LP fitted into a 12 inch square sleeve.
That was a lot of space to be filled. Classical discs tended to
lean on high art for the cover and increasingly, as the performer
cult grew, on photographs of the artists. On the reverse of the
sleeve there was space for an essay and more photos. Thus was
born the liner-note and there followed a gaggle of sages who wrote
the notes for a sometimes readership who bought the disc for its
audio aspect not for the essay. Eventually the quality of the
note became part of the review critics' checklist. LPs of songs
or choral works sometimes included an insert reproducing the words
being sung or orated and this was slipped into the capacious sleeve.
Box sets of LPs often had lavish 12" square booklets with
artwork, long texts and libretti. The liner-note was rising to
deserve serious consideration and inclusion in bibliographies.
Fast forward to the CD and suddenly the physical canvas shrank
to a third of its previous size. The CD represented an ultra-convenient
'miniature' format. The bulky 'jewel case' eccentrically
offered more protection than the card sleeve to a medium that
was more robust than the vinyl it supplanted. It took a while
for companies to adjust to the effective use of the booklet and
insert. In fact the transition is still imperfect as we know from
wrong-headed colour design choices (font on background) and font
sizes that are too small to read.
Film music LPs began appearing as serious entities in the 1970s.
Their arrival at a broader acceptance was signalled by reviews
and major label advertising in Gramophone, then a temple to classical
music. The vanguard was the RCA Classic Film scores series
with outliers from Polydor and a few others. From 1971 to about
1978 George Korngold working with Charles
Gerhardt, Sidney Sax and the National Philharmonic produced
a series of LPs reviving the music of Korngold, Waxman, Herrmann,
Steiner, Raksin, Amfitheatrof, Rózsa and others. These
were de luxe re-recordings in state of the art sumptuous
orchestral sound. The note writers included Christopher
Palmer who was more of a classical music writer but who caught
and poetically amplified the mood of the times with his reviews
in Gramophone, his books on Howells and Rózsa and his study
of Music and Impressionism not to mention his editing and concert
realisations of a whole range of otherwise cinema-shackled music:
Walton and Prokofiev amongst others. The new generation of RCA LPs
- which by the way - deserve systematic reissue of every scrap
Gerhardt recorded analogue or not - capitalised on the then latest
technology in the studio and in the home. For the hifi brigade
without much interest in film itself these discs were de rigueur
purchases as audio-strutting material.
The acceptance that cinema scores were serious and worthy of in-depth
attention prompted the resurrection of scores commissioned and
never used. These included Walton's for The Battle of Britain
and Alex North's for 2001.
What has all this to do with these three discs? The whole de
luxe film music movement on LP exploited the vinyl format
and packaging to the Nth degree. Stills of the artists, stills
from the film, essays, reminiscences, reproductions of film publicity
posters - all of these could be found on the reverse of LP sleeves
and in lavish inserted booklets. Tribute continue the philosophy
in the smaller format of the compact disc but with a few differences.
These Tribute CDs are whole score volumes not just the best bits
in suites. They use the practised Moscow Symphony and William
Stromberg also used by Marco Polo and Naxos in their prolific
but now halted film series and they record in Moscow not in London.
The CD format is intelligently taken up, with design and visual
reproduction qualities of the highest. Documentation is more extensive
than that provided in LP days and font size and legibility are
cannily handled. These are discs where the knowledge, acumen,
skill, care and love of the music are patent. We know that we
are in the presence of a series that meant something valuable
to those involved. And it shows.
Bernard Herrmann is, for me, one of the real greats of film music
alongside Korngold. His volume in the RCA Gerhardt series was
a Pauline revelation for me - a musical Damascus Road experience
with the Waxman album a close second. The Kentuckian is a frontiersman tale rather than
a standard cowboy actioner. It starred a young Burt Lancaster.
Herrmann's score leans on 'Olde English' material and reportedly
draws on music he wrote in the 1930s for a CBS radio dramatisation
of Housman's "A Shropshire Lad". Herrmann was after
all a passionate and erudite Anglophile. The highlights include
a determined, horn-rampant and optimistic Prelude. The
Key is a dark cue with middle strings set against their darker
brethren with italicised channel separation and a resulting broad
sound-stage. One of Herrmann's classic romantic melodies sings
out in The Forest borne up by singing violins, propelled
on high by horns and counter-sung by sweet woodwind. A superb
inspiration. Welcome Aboard is all hustle driven be a dancing
waterfront hoedown. The score is unusual in that the last half
dozen cues are full of tension and threat until the very end of
the finale when the voluptuous strings sing out that grand melody
and the horns and other brass add their valedictory paraph.
The 23 tracks of the Williamsburg music remind me
strongly of Herrmann in his mock Handelian mode - think in terms
of his music for the Gulliver's Travels film - Handel's
Water Music might be a good parallel with one or two surprising
harmonic turns.
The disc has a 32-page booklet designed by Jim Titus, with a Herrmann
overview by Steven C. Smith and exhaustive cue-by-cue analysis
of the two scores by Kevin Scott. The Kentuckian is the film that has had some airing on
TV in the UK. That's more than can be said of the other two feature
films represented here.
The music for the Ray Bradbury-based book-burning film, Fahrenheit
451 (dir. Francois Truffaut) uses a string orchestra and
extensive percussion; the wind being left in the cold as they
also are in the atmospheric score for The Nightdigger with
its viola d'amore solo. In a world where books are seen as dangerous
and are proscribed Guy Montag (played by Oskar Werner) is one
of an army of firemen whose duty is to burn all books. Montag
job is to burn all printed matter, but when he decides to steal
and read a book, his world view turns upside down. He leaves his
former way of life and escapes to a new world of 'book people.'
Werner and Julie Christie succumb to the lure of the printed word
and become dissenters who flee to a doomed world of book people
where ideas are still free. The Prelude sounds like the
radio telescope music from the score for The Day the Earth
Stood Still. Much the same applies to the fantastic tones
of TV Signals in which intricate bells ring and tinkle
as they also do in TV aerials (tr. 31). The Fire Station
has its origins in the Psycho windscreen wiper music.
Romance returns for The Bedroom (tr. 12). The swirling
attack of percussion and shuddering strings is signature Herrmann
in Fire alarm (tr.22). The harps cut and slash at the start
and a mysterious tension then takes hold in Vertigo (tr.34).
The Flame-thrower movement is a stunning evocation - what
a resourceful composer Herrmann was. The Road (tr.45) is
wonderfully regretful and carries the nostalgia of Ravel's Pavane.
It's a rapturously lovely score.
The Walking Distance music has a similar sound-profile
to the Fahrenheit 451 score. The Park movement carries
silvery etiolated shreds of children's play-songs. The music for
the Parents is poignant in contrast to the fear obviously
engendered in The House. There is a long string elegy running
close to four minutes. This is music fragile yet carrying a steely
argent strand.
After the spartan simplicity of strings and percussion with harp
- though it never seemed that way - of Fahrenheit 451 the
full orchestral score for Mysterious Island. Mysterious
Island takes the Jules Verne fantasy novel as its point of departure
and under producer Charles Schneer and visual effects magician
Ray Harryhausen conjures up another fantastic romp. During the
American Civil War escaping soldiers escape in a hot air balloon
and end up marooned on a remote island where gigantic creatures
roam. Pirate and volcanoes add to the wild mix.
The crammed full 32 page CD booklet includes reminiscences and
essays from Harryhausen, Christopher Young, Bruce Crawford, Gunther
Kogebehn, Craig Reardon and Kevin Scott.
William Stromberg in this first disc in the Tribute series refers
in his wonderfully vivid note to the physical impact of having
eight horns and four tubas playing very loudly in front of you.
The whole experience must have been overwhelming and you catch
a lot of this in this recording which, by the way, is the only
disc of the three to present just one score with no fillers. This
is the disc that includes cues cut from the film. There are six
of them. The whole score is awesome and grand. Listen to the first
Clouds cue (tr. 9) where wild high trembling strings are
offset by growling grumbling woodwind like some ancient groaning
creature. It recalls the noise made by the serpent engulfed in
lava in Herrmann's music for Journey to the Centre of the Earth
- another Jules Verne fantasy. The spatially-separated fanfares
are fantastically exciting and stimulating in The Rocks
(tr.16). There are some raindrop gentle moments too as in the
harp-decorated Exploration (tr.17). The Giant Crab is
portrayed with squat abrasive calls from woodwind and brass and
an attack like Stravinsky's The Rite. More gracious lyrical
material is carried by the clarinet in RC and Elena
(trs.26-27). The Rimsky-meets-de Falla Giant Bee buzzes
and hums with just that sense of threat of the fatal sting in
trs. 32 and 34. The timpani and cymbals rock the speakers in the
Attack at tr. 41. Herrmann was always a master at evoking
the oceanic depths and so it proves again with the sinking and
groaning low bass and harp ripples in Underwater. The
Ship Rising and The Earthquake (trs.59 and 60) take
us back to the monumentalism of the early pages of the score.
This is music of spectacle and adds immeasurably to the film.
Ultimately that is why producers came to Herrmann time and again.
The man was a sheer genius at the service of and a prime contributor
to the cinematic art. That we can hear and enjoy his music separate
from the images it illuminated and to which it lent life - rather
than the other way around - is cause for rejoicing.
One puzzle with the Mysterious Island disc: my player says
62 tracks yet the book and insert lists only 61. The answer?
Each of the three discs carries a 32 page booklet with track-by-track
plot and music analysis. They include essays putting the music
in the context of the concert and other cinema music of their
time and are so substantial that they only just fit into the lugs
in the jewel case.
These are complete scores with the tracks laid out in chronological
plot order. Cues cut from the film are included where the material
has survived and these tracks have been interpolated into the
assumed correct position had they been used. The tracks are numerous:
61 for Mysterious Island, 48 for The Kentuckian,
47 for Fahrenheit 451. Walking Distance - a classic
1950s episode from The Twilight Zone and Williamsburg
- The Story of a Patriot are included as generous and rare
fillers. The latter is shown only at two Williamsburg cinemas
as part of the historical themed museum at Colonial Williamsburg.
It was commissioned with no expense spared and was first screened
at the museum theaters in March of 1957. It is reportedly the
longest-running motion picture ever: some fifty-three years. It
uses a small orchestra.
The tracks are at the longest 3.56 and at the shortest 0.11 so
there is an inevitable stop-start aspect to the listening experience
but it does provide an authentic experience for those who take
exception to symphonic syntheses as in the case of Rumon Gamba's
equally sumptuous Chandos/BBC Phil Korngold recordings (Sea
Wolf and Sea
Hawk).
The Moscow sessions must have been long and arduous if the crystal
clarity and relishable sound is anything to go by; nothing left
to chance.
Long may Tribute continue their work.
Rob Barnett
Complete Tracklist
THE KENTUCKIAN (1955)
Prelude (1:50)
The Stagecoach (1:18)
The Jail (:26)
Daydreaming I (1:36)
Decker (:37)
The Fromes (:43)
Trio (1:01)
The Key (:46)
The Forest (1:12)
Morning and Night (2:04)
The Whip (:42)
The House (:20)
Hannah (:55)
The Pearl (1:21)
The Bar (:14)
The Attic (:59)
Miss Susie (2:16)
The Letter (:57)
The Loafer (:25)
Anger (:18)
The School (:14)
Daydreaming II (1:08)
The Steamboat (1:03)
Welcome Aboard (:34)
Supper (1:03)
Nocturne (2:49)
The Vigil (1:19)
Confession (1:14)
River Queen (:36)
Saloon Piano (1:47)
The Gamblers (Piano) (:33)
The Captain (:13)
Scherzo (1:02)
The Boy and Dog (:44)
The Drunk (:33)
The Rope (1:15)
The Wheel (:20)
Victory (:35)
The Reproach (2:00)
Boyhood's End (3:42)
The Boy's Call (Horn) (:17)
Night Sounds (1:31)
The Still (1:10)
A-waiting (:30)
The Rifle (1:30)
The Body (:50)
The Kill (:13)
Finale (1:27)
WILLIAMSBURG: The Story of a Patriot (1956)
Overture (2:09)
Pastoral Prelude (2:45)
Departure (:38)
The Street and the Inn (1:08)
Barrel Organ Music I (1:31)
Barrel Organ Music II (:44)
The House of Burgesses (:29)
Treason (:18)
The Governor (:57)
Taxes (Scherzo) (1:03)
The New Hat (:43)
Homecoming (1:06)
Gown and Court (1:01)
The Bench (:37)
The Palace (:47)
The Garden (1:06)
The Mock Hanging (:35)
The Church (:44)
Royal Marines (:41)
The Drummer (:44)
Concord (39)
The Park (:37)
Drafting (:28)
Finale (1:33) Total Disc Time: 73:19
FAHRENHEIT 451
Prelude (1:34)
Fire Station (0:53)
The Lamp* (3:29)
Clarisse (1:06)
Happiness (0:43)
TV Signals* (1:28)
Bedtime (2:02*)
The Boys (1:51)
Home (0:50)
Pink and Gold Pills* (1:37)
Recovery (0:51)
The Bedroom (1:44)
The Monorail (1:01)
The Novel* (David Copperfield) (3:03)
The Garden++ (1:22)
The Bridge (1:23)
The Café (0:46)
The Box (0:57)
The Corridor++ (1:23)
Montag's Books (1:16)
The Pole (1:08)
Fire Alarm* (1:40)
The Books (1:28)
The Hose* (1:34)
Flames* (1:30)
The Basket (1:21)
The Reading (1:33)
The Nightmare* (2:13)
The Skylight* (1:28)
The Windows (0:37)
TV Aerials (0:27)
The Photos (1:08)
The File (0:50)
Vertigo (1:06)
Information (0:52)
The Vase (2:02)
The Mirror (0:35)
Fire Engine (1:11)
Farewell (0:17)
Flame Thrower (0:33)
Flowers of Fire (1:16)
The Captain's Death (0:53)
Freedom* (1:56)
The Railway* (1:52)
The Road (1:57)
First Snows of Winter (0:32)
Finale (2:01)
THE TWILIGHT ZONE: WALKING DISTANCE
Prelude (0:30)
Memories (2:33)
The Park (1:44)
The House (1:27)
The Parents (1:47)
Martin's Summer (1:07)
Elegy (3:59)
Finale (1:14) Total Disc Time 77:40
* includes music cut from the film
++ entire cue cut from film
MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961)
Prelude (1:34)
The Battle* (1:21)
The Gates (0:38)
The Stairs (0:24)
The Tower (0:31)
The Escape (0:38)
The Balloon 1 (1:18)
Introductions (0:29)
The Clouds A (1:06)
The Clouds B (0:55)
The Clouds C (0:47)
The Clouds D (0:41)
The Clouds E (1:03)
The Balloon 2 (2:09)
The Island (0:39)
The Rocks (0:36)
Exploration (2:27)
The Giant Crab (3:02)
The Volcano* (1:18)
The Crater (0:31)
The Beach (1:46)
The Stream (0:46)
The Cliff (1:34)
The Cave (2:30)
Narration (1:38)
R. C. [Robinson Crusoe] (0:15)
Elena (0:34)
The Shadow (0:40)
The Bird (2:43)
Duo (1:52)
Honeycomb (1:02)
The Giant Bee 1 (1:59)
The Sail (0:29)
The Giant Bee 2 (0:51)
The Flag (0:52)
The Fire (0:38)
The Nautilus* (1:38)
The Bridge (1:14)
The Pirates (1:32)
Gunsmoke (0:42)
Attack++ (0:53)
The Sinking Ship (1:05)
Captain Nemo (0:41)
The Bottle (0:31)
The Pipeline (1:18)
Underwater (1:28)
The Smoke (1:39)
Danger A (0:20)
Danger B (0:23)
Lava Flow (1:16)
The Octopus* (1:31)
The Raft (0:26)
The Rock (0:39)
The Sub Deck (0:35)
The Tentacles (0:31)
The Fight (2:50)
The Divers (1:17)
The Air Hose (0:51)
The Ship Rising* (1:19)
The Earthquake (1:04)
Finale* (1:26)
Surprise Bonus Track (2:10)
*includes music cut from the film
++ entire cue cut from film
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