Herrmann Wuthering Heights
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Bernard Herrmann
Genre:
Opera
Label: Souvenir Records
Magazine Review Date: 8/1993
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 188
Mastering:
ADD
Catalogue Number: UKCD2050/2
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Wuthering Heights |
Bernard Herrmann, Composer
Bernard Herrmann, Composer Bernard Herrmann, Conductor David Kelly, Mr Lockwood, Bass Donaldson Bell, Heathcliffe, Tenor Elizabeth Bainbridge, Nelly Linton, Soprano Elizabethan Singers John Kitchiner, Hindley Earnshaw, Bass Joseph Ward, Edgar Linton, Tenor Mark Snashall, Hareton Earnshaw Michael Rippon, Joseph, Baritone Morag Beaton, Catherine Earnshaw Pamela Bowden, Isabella Linton Pro Arte Orchestra |
Author: Patrick O'Connor
In his recent biography of Bernard Herrmann, A Heart at Fire's Centre (California University Press), Steven C. Smith relates how stormy the rehearsals and recording sessions were for this recording of Herrmann's only major opera. It was also the world premiere—for the opera was never staged during Herrmann's lifetime. Ursula Vaughan-Williams, at whose house a lot of the early rehearsals took place, called them ''ghastly sessions'' and related how ''Benny behaved atrociously''.
It is a long haul, listening to this version of the Bronte classic, as EG remarked in his review of the first issue, ''one cannot just go on adding solemn music, and expecting it to remain compelling all through''. In the intervening years, Herrmann has become something of a cult-composer, and the old LP-set a much sought-after collector's item, so this reissue is welcome.
Herrmann composed the opera during the 1940s, when he also provided music for a film of Jane Eyre, starring Orson Welles, for whom he had written the score for Citizen Kane (which includes the riotous ''Air de Salammbo'' subsequently made famous by Dame Kiri and RCA—would that there were more of that sort of writing here). The opera follows the novel fairly faithfully, a prologue and epilogue setting the scene for the story to be told in flash-back. The dialogue, which is naturalistic, using spoken forms and little repetition or melisma, is influenced mostly by Puccini, although the orchestral writing owes more to Strauss. The main highlights are a long duet for Cathy and Heathcliff in Act 1, which later has an orchestral Nocturne—an interlude in the tradition of turn-of-the-century verismo operas, and a sort of mad scene for Cathy.
Herrmann fails in generalized dramatic writing for voice and orchestra to differentiate sufficiently between the characters, despite various motifs. The tension mood music recalls too obviously Herrmann's music for the movies—he called it ''a landscape tone poem which envelopes the characters''. Although not written specifically for the gramophone, it resides quite happily as such in what is the definitive performance. Carlisle Floyd and Bernard J. Taylor have subsequently been drawn to use Wuthering Heights as the basis for operas (Taylor's piece is recorded with Lesley Garrett as Cathy). When these records were first heard, the listeners at Herrmann's gathering included Francois Truffaut, who commissioned from the composer the music for Fahrenheit 451.'
It is a long haul, listening to this version of the Bronte classic, as EG remarked in his review of the first issue, ''one cannot just go on adding solemn music, and expecting it to remain compelling all through''. In the intervening years, Herrmann has become something of a cult-composer, and the old LP-set a much sought-after collector's item, so this reissue is welcome.
Herrmann composed the opera during the 1940s, when he also provided music for a film of Jane Eyre, starring Orson Welles, for whom he had written the score for Citizen Kane (which includes the riotous ''Air de Salammbo'' subsequently made famous by Dame Kiri and RCA—would that there were more of that sort of writing here). The opera follows the novel fairly faithfully, a prologue and epilogue setting the scene for the story to be told in flash-back. The dialogue, which is naturalistic, using spoken forms and little repetition or melisma, is influenced mostly by Puccini, although the orchestral writing owes more to Strauss. The main highlights are a long duet for Cathy and Heathcliff in Act 1, which later has an orchestral Nocturne—an interlude in the tradition of turn-of-the-century verismo operas, and a sort of mad scene for Cathy.
Herrmann fails in generalized dramatic writing for voice and orchestra to differentiate sufficiently between the characters, despite various motifs. The tension mood music recalls too obviously Herrmann's music for the movies—he called it ''a landscape tone poem which envelopes the characters''. Although not written specifically for the gramophone, it resides quite happily as such in what is the definitive performance. Carlisle Floyd and Bernard J. Taylor have subsequently been drawn to use Wuthering Heights as the basis for operas (Taylor's piece is recorded with Lesley Garrett as Cathy). When these records were first heard, the listeners at Herrmann's gathering included Francois Truffaut, who commissioned from the composer the music for Fahrenheit 451.'
Herrmann Wuthering Heights
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