Bernard HERRMANN (1911-1975)
Hangover Square (arr. from original mss by Stephen Hogger) (1941)
[17:05]
Concerto Macabre for piano and orchestra (1941) (performing
edition by Norma Shepherd) (1992) [11:01]
Citizen Kane arr. from original mss by Stephen Hogger (1940-41)
[49:07]
Orla Boylan (soprano); Martin Roscoe (piano)
BBC Philharmonic/Rumon Gamba
rec. 24 and 25 March and 14 July (Salammbô’s Aria only) 2009 Studio 7, BBC
New Broadcasting House, Manchester. DDD
Full tracklisting at end reviews
CHANDOS CHAN 10577 [77:31]
This very generous selection from Bernard Herrmann’s score for Orson Welles’s
Citizen Kane is most welcome. Citizen Kane is widely considered
to be the greatest film of all time; a poll of more than 1,500 members of
the film industry chose Kane the best for the American Film Institute’s
100 Years…100 Movies, unveiled in 1998. It also topped the AFI's 100 Years…100
Movies — 10th Anniversary Edition and has held the top place in Sight and
Sound’s ten year critics’ poll from 1962 onwards. Not bad for a first film
– even if it did fail at the box office and was ignored for 15 years! Certainly,
as a piece of film-making it is an astonishing achievement, as is Bernard
Herrmann’s music for the film, also his first work in Hollywood.
RKO bought Patrick Hamilton’s novel Hangover Square at the suggestion
of the star, Laird Cregar. If you know the book then forget it as there is
much in the film that is new, courtesy of screenwriter Barry Lyndon. But it’s
a marvellous film, which includes madness, a love story, murder, mayhem and
a Piano Concerto! Eat your heart out Star Wars! Here we have
21 cues from the film, and what a wealth of material there is. The Piano
Concerto is a fine piece in its own right – a dark, troubled, work, a
Totentanz in its own way – but because the part it plays in the film is odd,
to say the least, it has never gained the popularity of other film Concertos,
such as Rozsa’s Spellbound Concerto. This is fine stuff, hard-hitting
and dynamic, with a virtuoso solo part and rich orchestration. The ever-reliable
Martin Roscoe makes a very persuasive case for the music.
Citizen Kane is such a magnificent score that it’s a real pleasure
to welcome this new recording of a sizeable chunk of the music. Here is Herrmann
trying new things, creating not only wonderfully atmospheric music, but playing
with form and style. The aria from the supposed opera Salammbô is sung
as it should be, not as in the film, by a dramatic soprano. Orla Boylan is
a little too generous with her use of a wide vibrato and the purity of the
line is lost. This is the only flaw in an otherwise excellent disk.
Whilst you wouldn’t want to be without the Herrmann disk with the National
Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Charles Gerhardt (RCA GD80707)
– which has Kiri Te Kanawa singing the Salammbô aria – nor Herrmann’s
own recording of excerpts from the score this is a fine exposition of the
music. Fantastic sound and good notes all go to making this a most rewarding
and desirable issue.
Bob Briggs
And a further review - from Rob Barnett:-
This is a very generously timed and magnificently performed and recorded disc.
It’s a red letter event for the Herrmann literature.
The last few years have been exciting ones for Herrmann fans. Sad to say this
has not involved a new recording of the opera Wuthering Heights; nor
even a reissue of the rather one-dimensional sounding Unicorn Souvenir set
(UKCD2050-52). However the following pallet-full is not to be sniffed at.
Decca Eloquence (Australia) will reissue Herrmann conducting The Planets
with the LPO (1970). Tribute’s Rolls Royce revivals look likely to include
a new and typically resplendent Stromberg-Moscow collaboration though no one
is saying which score yet. Andrew Rose’s Pristine are resurrecting what I
fervently hope will be the first of a series of radio acetate transcriptions
of Herrmann’s CBS Symphony Orchestra years. From 1945 they have Handel: Water
Music Suite (arr. Harty); Vaughan Williams Oboe Concerto and Elgar Falstaff
caught on Sunday 9 September 1945 PASC202. From the Prometheus label The
Seventh Voyage of Sinbad is conducted by “Kurt Graunke and his orchestra”
in 1958. It’s a 2 CD issue with the complete original score in mono mixed
with the album stereo cues and the original soundtrack album. By report it’s
suspected to be conducted by Herrmann with a pickup orchestra in Shepperton
although Kurt Graunke certainly existed. There’s also a rare Twisted Nerve/The
Bride Wore Black from Bruce Kimmel’s Kritzerland label. It includes The
Twisted Nerve LP and The Bride Wore Black 45 rpm on CD – rare items
both. The CD runs 28 minutes and is limited to 1200 copies. Now if only Varese-Sarabande
could be persuaded to issue a boxed set of their often inspired RSNO/McNeely/Debney
re-recordings of scores such as Marnie, Sinbad, Trouble With
Harry, Vertigo and The Day The Earth Stood Still. Perhaps
Eloquence will follow up their Planets with a reissue of the three
Phase Four Film Spectaculars that Herrmann made with the National Phil in
the 1970s.
The present Chandos issue is a compelling purchase for Herrmann fans and even
for neophytes. It’s recorded with aching clarity and the music-making has
a vibrant feel for the idiom. That’s typical of Gamba who taps direct into
the fleshy, decaying, sinister, nocturnal, romantic milieu that bridges these
two scores.
In much the same way as Chandos and Gamba have made their two Korngold discs
compulsory acquisitions so the Herrmann constituency will have to have this
one. It’s the first revival of the Hangover Square music
as arranged by Stephen Hogger. You may know his name already as he has done
so much work for the RVW film score revivals on Chandos. I know about the
1972 revival of Concerto Macabre by Joaquin Achucarro on that iconic
Herrmann RCA Classic Film Scores collection (now available from Archiv Music).
Others, apart from Achucarro, also recorded the Concerto as part of
various film music piano concerto medleys. The Concerto appears here in a
new edition which we are told incorporates the composer’s revisions for concert
performance. It’s a Lisztian effusion from the same left-field as Totentanz
but blended with the lichen and fog so gloriously typical of Herrmann.
The marriage of Herrmann’s music-melodrama with the Laird Cregar/Linda Darnell
film is made in heaven – or possibly somewhere hotter. In any event it’s a
totally apt alliance and the music rewards attention. If the Concerto and
the Hogger sequence overlap the listener will not feel cheated. It’s all classic
Herrmann and you are hearing music not heard before or at least not in this
form. Even in the film music sequence the piano plays a prominent part rather
as it does in Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances.
Citizen Kane was Herrmann’s first cinema partnership with Orson
Welles. It’s a revered film with many starkly imaginative images which are
intensified by Herrmann’s music. The extended score here is way beyond the
compact suite featured on the RCA Classic series as master-minded by Charles
Gerhardt/George Korngold. It has been recorded before, though not with such
Manchester immediacy and allure, by Label
X/Prometheus and by Varese-Sarabande
(RSNO/McNeely).
The score is very varied. Wild frilly frivolous galops - not a stone’s throw
from Offenbach - jostle with romps glaring with Prokofiev-like psychological
subtext. Music of piercing regret is heard alongside Romeo and Juliet-inflected
(could Herrmann have known the ballet at that time?) poignancy. As illustration
take the irresistibly gentle Kane Meets Susan (tr. 8). There’s even
some Weill-style sleaze (tr. 11). There’s also that grand operatic aria (complete
with full words and translation in the booklet) in which Orla Boylan delivers
the goods in a way that Kane’s poor Susan never could. That aria transcends
the cod-Grand Siècle idiom and has one wishing that Herrmann had had
the luxury of time to write a full opera in this unblushing uber-Lakmé
toxic-exotic idiom. It’s clearly the sort of flamboyance that might have
featured in Act I of Phantom of the Opera. Boylan puts up a completely
credible and ripely enjoyable challenge to the young and unspoilt Kiri Te
Kanawa in the aria as recorded by Gerhardt back in 1972.
Chandos once again notch up a lavish production in every single aspect.
Rob Barnett
Full track listing:
Hangover Square
1 Opening Titles; The Dealer; Murder and Fire; Confession [6:21]
2 Netta; The Spell; The Murder; Fame [4:29]
3 The Cat; Netta's Death; The Bonfire; Recovery [6:05]
4 Concerto macabre for Piano and Orchestra [11:01] (arr. Herrmann)
Citizen Kane
5 Prelude; Rain (Susan in Nightclub); Thatcher Library; Manuscript Reading
and Snow Picture; Mother's Sacrifice; Charles Meets Thatcher [8:10]
6 Galop; Dissolve to Thatcher Reading Document; Second Manuscript; Thanks;
Bernstein's Narration; Kane's New Office; New Hornpipe Polka; Carter's Exit;
Chronicle Scherzo; Bernstein's Presto [7:15]
7 Kane's Return; Collecting Statues; Valse Presentation; Sunset Narrative;
Theme and Variations [7:38]
8 Kane Meets Susan; Susan's Room; Mother Memory; The Trip; Geddes's Departure;
Kane Marries [5:40]
9 Salammbo's Aria [4:12]
10 Leland's Dismissal; New Dawn Music; Xanadu; Jigsaws; Second Xanadu [7:10]
11 Kane's Picnic; Susan Leaves; El Rancho; The Glass Ballo; Finale [8:28]