Like many successful Hollywood composers, Bernard Herrmann pursued musical endeavours beyond (in his time) the celluloid. Studies at Juilliard were followed by conducting posts with the New Chamber Orchestra of New York and the CBS Symphony Orchestra, with which he championed music by major figures of the day, including Ives, even as he wrote music for radio programmes and composed concert works and, eventually, movie scores. Herrmann’s versatility in three genres – radio, chamber music and film – is captured on this absorbing recording featuring the PostClassical Ensemble, an experimental orchestral laboratory in residence at the Washington National Cathedral.

The most expansive piece is a 1944 radio play, Whitman, a collaboration between Herrmann and the writer Norman Corwin, offered here in a 2019 reconstruction by Christopher Husted. Most of the text is drawn from Whitman’s collection Leaves of Grass, with additions by Corwin pertaining to the Second World War. Herrmann had already made his mark in the film world with the scores for Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons and Robert Stevenson’s Jane Eyre when he penned the string-orchestra music for Whitman. His contribution is largely atmospheric, a sphere in which he excelled – everything precisely gauged to the emotional and psychological moment. Even the quotations from American music sound newly considered as shaped by Herrmann. In this performance, the PostClassical Ensemble, led by Angel Gil-Ordóñez, do a handsome job supporting the narrative and baritone William Sharp, who reads Whitman’s verses with noble vibrancy.

The ensemble also provide the requisite power and mystery in Psycho: A Narrative for string orchestra, a 1968 creation in which Herrmann reworked themes from his score for the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock thriller. Reconstructed in 1999 by John Mauceri, the music weaves a transfixing spell, suggesting the plot’s ominous twists and demonstrating Herrmann’s virtuoso command of string techniques (most strikingly, indeed, in those shrieking stabs that jolt the shower scene).

Between radio and movie scores comes Herrmann’s captivating Souvenirs de voyage, a quintet for clarinet and strings from 1967 influenced by British pastoral music and JMW Turner’s Venetian canvases. The piece reveals the composer’s mastery of intimate expression in three movements replete with nostalgic lyricism and lilting, seductive flights of fancy. The piece receives a tender and detailed account by clarinettist David Jones, violinists Netanel Draiblate and Eva Cappelletti Chao, viola player Philippe Chao and cellist Benjamin Capps.