Herrmann Psycho
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Bernard Herrmann
Label: Varese Sarabande
Magazine Review Date: 13/1997
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 61
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: VSD5765
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Psycho |
Bernard Herrmann, Composer
Bernard Herrmann, Composer Joel McNeely, Conductor Royal Scottish National Orchestra |
Author: Andrew Achenbach
Here’s a most welcome follow-up release to this same team’s Gramophone Award-winning realization of Bernard Herrmann’s complete score for Vertigo (9/96). In supplying the music for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 chiller Psycho, Herrmann was forced to work within a challengingly restricted budget. He therefore resolved to compose a score employing strings only, stating that his aim was to “complement the black-and-white photography of the film with a black-and-white score”. It was completed within a month and Hitchcock could not have been more pleased with the finished article. (Astonishingly, the music branch of the Academy demurred, depriving Herrmann’s masterly contribution of even a nomination at that year’s Oscars.)
In its implacable chill and stark, hypnotic beauty, Psycho represents one of Herrmann’s most consummate achievements. One thinks immediately of the chugging ferocity of the “Prelude” (for which the late Saul Bass, as on Vertigo and North by Northwest, provided the memorable title sequence), or the ensuing “The city”, where Herrmann’s slow-moving (and peculiarly Delian) chordal writing could not form a greater contrast to what has gone before. Next, try “Temptation”, with its nagging undertow of semiquavers, as Marion packs her belongings and can’t stop herself glancing at the envelope of cash lying on her bed. I love, too, the menacingly insistent viola motif in “The parlour” (where Marion first chats with the seemingly affable Norman), not to mention the deliberately queasy, indeterminate tonality of “The madhouse” (when Marion innocently ventures that Norman might consider putting his infirm mother in a home).
I’ve not yet mentioned the brutal murder in the shower, with those unforgettable, terrifying molto forzando e feroce glissandos. That exemplary annotator, Kevin Mulhall, reminds us that the director originally didn’t want any music at all for this notorious scene. Herrmann went ahead anyway, and, on viewing the shocking visuals with the music added, Hitchcock accepted his first thoughts were an “improper suggestion”. Die-hard completists will also be pleased to learn that the CD also contains the world premiere of “The cleanup”, a nervy, two-and-a-quarter-minute cue that never made it to Hitchcock’s final print.
Returning to Herrmann’s own 1975 recording for the purposes of this review, I still find it oddly unsatisfying: the strings of the National PO really don’t sound ‘up for it’, with both discipline and concentration inclined to waver. Happily, Varese Sarabande’s lustrous new production brings no such reservations. As before, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra respond with palpable gusto and laudable unanimity for Joel McNeely (whose tempos are consistently apt), while the engineering is spectacularly realistic and ample to match. Not to be missed.'
In its implacable chill and stark, hypnotic beauty, Psycho represents one of Herrmann’s most consummate achievements. One thinks immediately of the chugging ferocity of the “Prelude” (for which the late Saul Bass, as on Vertigo and North by Northwest, provided the memorable title sequence), or the ensuing “The city”, where Herrmann’s slow-moving (and peculiarly Delian) chordal writing could not form a greater contrast to what has gone before. Next, try “Temptation”, with its nagging undertow of semiquavers, as Marion packs her belongings and can’t stop herself glancing at the envelope of cash lying on her bed. I love, too, the menacingly insistent viola motif in “The parlour” (where Marion first chats with the seemingly affable Norman), not to mention the deliberately queasy, indeterminate tonality of “The madhouse” (when Marion innocently ventures that Norman might consider putting his infirm mother in a home).
I’ve not yet mentioned the brutal murder in the shower, with those unforgettable, terrifying molto forzando e feroce glissandos. That exemplary annotator, Kevin Mulhall, reminds us that the director originally didn’t want any music at all for this notorious scene. Herrmann went ahead anyway, and, on viewing the shocking visuals with the music added, Hitchcock accepted his first thoughts were an “improper suggestion”. Die-hard completists will also be pleased to learn that the CD also contains the world premiere of “The cleanup”, a nervy, two-and-a-quarter-minute cue that never made it to Hitchcock’s final print.
Returning to Herrmann’s own 1975 recording for the purposes of this review, I still find it oddly unsatisfying: the strings of the National PO really don’t sound ‘up for it’, with both discipline and concentration inclined to waver. Happily, Varese Sarabande’s lustrous new production brings no such reservations. As before, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra respond with palpable gusto and laudable unanimity for Joel McNeely (whose tempos are consistently apt), while the engineering is spectacularly realistic and ample to match. Not to be missed.'
Herrmann Psycho
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