Bernard Herrmann - Film Music

Bernard HERRMANN (1911-1975)

Film Music 

Hangover Square

Concerto Macabre*

Citizen Kane**

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Bernard Herrmann, Composer

Martin Roscoe (Piano)*

Orla Boylan (Soprano)**

Tracks 1-8, 10, 11 recorded March 24 & 25, 2009.

Track 9 recorded July 14, 2009.

There have been many Bernard Herrmann film compilations down the decades but this exciting issue gives us two titles in extended selections, one for a cinematic masterpiece, Citizen Kane, the other, less familiar, for Hangover Square, a British thriller from the early 1940s. The Concerto macabre for piano and orchestra from Hangover Square has been recorded before but it’s prefaced here by a three-movement suite that like the Kane music has been arranged from the original manuscripts by Stephen Hogger. Both the Suite and the Concerto begin with a striking rhythmic idea that shares a kinship with the opening motif of Rachmaninov’s Prelude in G minor, Op 23 No 2. In the Concerto the pianist assumes the Jekyll and Hyde character who blacks out when he hears dissonant sounds. His victims include Netta, the woman he adores; her lovely theme is the one solace in this frequently troubled score. It also appears in the Suite followed by a wild scherzo reminding us that this music is a far cry from the so-called school of overtly romantic Denham concertos that followed in the wake of the Warsaw Concerto. Martin Roscoe is the commanding soloist in a performance that has exceptional depth and resonance.

Most of the music from Citizen Kane has been recorded before but not at such length nor in such a vivid performance. On viewing the film after listening to this CD, it is impressive that so much of Herrmann’s score is on the original soundtrack. His innovative music, much of it at odds with prevailing practice in Hollywood film-writing, is highlighted in each of the six sections in this arrangement. The sparing use of the romantic gesture, the bold employment of glowering brass and festering woodwind to portray the trail of wealth and power, then death and decay in Kane’s palatial palace of Xanadu, is riveting. His jaunty character (tr 7, cue 15) and those of his two wives are musically spot on. I love the quote of “Thine be the glory” in the “New Hornpipe Polka” from tr 6. The first Mrs Kane has a lovely waltz in the style of Waldteufel whose theme progresses into a set of variations that chronicles the breakdown of Kane’s first marriage over a series of encounters at the breakfast table. For Kane’s second wife, a would-be operatic soprano, Herrmann pens a grand operatic introduction that heralds her disastrous stage debut as she goes on to sing the fiendishly difficult Salammbo’s Aria, the composer’s valentine to late-19th-century opera. Orla Boylan gives her best here without entirely erasing memories of Kiri Te Kanawa’s fabulous version in Charles Gerhardt’s finely nuanced RCA recording. Citizen Kane was Herrmann’s and Welles’s cinematic debut and it still stands as their finest hour. This marvellously played recording does it full justice.

Gramophone Magazine