Herrmann's Humdinging House of (Hardly Haphazard) Harmonic Hoots

Started by Lethevich, June 03, 2009, 08:44:37 AM

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Dundonnell

Quote from: Guido on June 04, 2009, 05:03:35 PM
I can only see it on Amazon where it is ridiculously expensive...

If you are interested Guido.....let me know ;D

Lethevich

Quote from: Guido on June 04, 2009, 04:22:53 PM
Where are you finding these CDs? Are you paying the extortionate prices that Amazon sellers seem to be charging?

Demonoid* - I'm not often interested in paying new prices for secondhand CDs, let alone double or quadrouple. DLing these out of print discs that have put several composers on the map for me, meaning if a new recording or reissue of Moby Dick becomes available, I will buy it in a heartbeat. Weird how hopeless some labels are at capitalism. Make them available as downloads with linear notes (which has almost zero overhead fees after setup costs), and we will buy them. Goddamn it!

*There has been a lot of rare stuff uploaded recently - lots of American composers on the defunct Bay Cities label, etc.
Peanut butter, flour and sugar do not make cookies. They make FIRE.

Brian

Quote from: Catison on June 04, 2009, 02:04:23 PM
Reading the title of this thread, I got vertigo until I looked north by northwest and saw the taxi driver with the sisters's torn curtains.  My temperature went to Fahrenheit 451, because the Egyptian is always letting the birds into the garden of evil.  That is the trouble with Harry, giving me a twisted nerve and no joy in the morning.  You couldn't say he was man who knew too much, but he was always the man in the gray flannel suit.  He told me the day the earth stood still we were on dangerous ground.  I thought he was psycho, because he is always talking about the naked and the dead for endless nights.  Perhaps that is why he likes his blue denim cape. Fear the wrong man, and it's alive.  Any citizen kane tell you that.
;D This post took my breath away. Bravo!

karlhenning

Too much Hitchock not enough Herrmann on this thread  $:)  ;D

Cato

Right before Easter, the Minnesota Opera is offering a new production of Bernard Herrmann's opera Wuthering Heights:

http://www.mnopera.org/season/performances?module=performances&showid=1949

Be there, or be a rhombus!   :o

We do indeed hope that a CD will be available!
"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)

eyeresist

Hopefully this will be the start of a general revival...

listener

Another collection, non-Hitchcock, on CD
and I have the OOP? Koch 3-7225 recording of the Concerto Macabre from Hangover Square in my collection.
"Keep your hand on the throttle and your eye on the rail as you walk through life's pathway."

drogulus

     Herrmann favorites of mine:

     The original (1959) opening and closing music for The Twilight Zone.

     The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) which featured the first appearance of the amplified solid body bass.

     The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

     Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

     Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

     Mysterious Island (1961)
     

     
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Cato

Heidi Waleson of the Wall Street Journal offered a review of Wuthering Heights, which was recently performed by the Minnesota Opera.

"The composer Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975) is best known for his atmospheric scores on such films as "Citizen Kane," "Vertigo," "Psycho" and "Taxi Driver," but he considered his only opera, "Wuthering Heights," completed in 1951, to be his masterwork. The opera was never performed in his lifetime, apparently because Herrmann refused to permit any cuts or alterations to its 3½ hours of music; it finally had one production in 1982 at the Portland Opera. This season, the Minnesota Opera mounted the piece as part of its multiyear New Works Initiative. Trimmed to just under three hours, including one intermission, the work comes off as an intriguing artifact by a composer who was clearly devoted to every one of the far too many notes that he wrote for it...

Herrmann's best work is in the lush and colorful orchestration, which powerfully conjures up the natural world that plays such an important role in the story—the changing seasons and the violent storms of the Yorkshire moors that symbolize Cathy and Heathcliff's turbulent bond.

The vocal writing is less persuasive, much of it a shapeless parlando that is merely a vehicle for the text. A few eloquent arias, like Cathy's "I have dreamt," advance the action and the character development, but others, like her husband Edgar's "Now art thou dear," in which he reads a poem out loud to her, are more like set pieces designed to give the singers a showcase. There are no multivoice ensembles, and even with the relatively fleet tempi adopted by conductor Michael Christie, the piece still feels too long, particularly in the first half. Ironically, it would have benefited from cinematic dramaturgy, a world whose constraints Herrmann was no doubt trying to escape...."

Waleson praises the singers and conductor for doing their best with what she obviously considers to be a lengthy mediocrity.

For the entire review:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703916004576271104170753020.html?mod=WSJ_ArtsEnt_LifestyleArtEnt_4
"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)


bhodges

Great news: the Minnesota Opera is recording Wuthering Heights in HD. More information here, from the opera company's website.

--Bruce

Cato

Quote from: Brewski on April 21, 2011, 07:18:59 AM
Great news: the Minnesota Opera is recording Wuthering Heights in HD. More information here, from the opera company's website.

--Bruce

Thanks to Bruce Brewski! And you can check out small excerpts here:

http://www.mnopera.org/watchlisten#tab1&vid=3


The "On the Moors" staging strikes me as something out of the Pre-Raphaelites.

e.g.

"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)

J.Z. Herrenberg

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Cato

Herrmann's 100th birthday has generated an article in the Wall Street Journal today (June 29, 2011).

See:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303339904576403661596180184.html?KEYWORDS=Herrmann

Excerpts:

"Thus Herrmann became America's greatest film composer not on the basis of a few extraordinary pieces, but for an unsurpassed and complex body of work in the service of story. No other composer so consistently enriched the audience's understanding of a character's emotional and psychological state.

"That was his great skill—his understanding of the psychology of character," the film composer Howard Shore said. "

And:

"As a composer for hire, Herrmann's unflagging belief in his own opinions about music served him as well as his supreme skill at composition and orchestration. He once told William S. Paley, the president of CBS for whom he worked for 15 years starting in 1933: "You're assuming the public is as ignorant about music as you."

"He was not a collegial guy," said (Composer John) Williams, who worked with Herrmann in Universal Studios' TV department. "He was contemptuous of a certain kind of populism. He had his strong points of vision and had no truck for people he felt didn't have integrity in their work. But with me he was very kind."

And:

"Herrmann was nominated for an Academy Award for "Kane" and "The Devil and Daniel Webster," winning the award for the latter—his sole Oscar. With those two works, he established himself as a visionary film composer—with a formidable and prickly personality. In 1942, he demanded his name be removed from the credits to Welles's "The Magnificent Ambersons" after RKO famously re-edited and butchered the film."
"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)

karlhenning

Nice. Knew there was some cosmic reason I was revisiting North by Northwest, Vertigo & Psycho this year!

Cato

I came across this by chance: an arrangement for solo piano of parts of various movie scores, including Sisters (one of the most under-rated scores Herrmann ever produced).

Here is an example of Vertigo:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003P9SZ2S/ref=dm_mu_dp_trk4

I was not all that impressed with the arrangements as heard from the little snippets (they sounded awfully thin), but in case anyone is interested...
"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)

cassandra

Hi, this is my first posting so be gentle with me!

I remember John Amis relating how, when a composition student asked Herrmann for some tips, he snarled "When the composer's name comes up in the titles, go into the major key!" True or not, it fits in with the character we have been handed down.

vandermolen

This new release looks very interesting!  I have the old Unicorn CD of 'Moby Dick' with Herrmann conducting the 'National Philharmonic Orchestra' - but such an exciting work deserves a modern recording.  I hope that the same forces go on to record Bernard Herrmann's ' Symphony No.1'.
[asin]B005JA9U3E[/asin]
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Lethevich

Quote from: vandermolen on October 06, 2011, 12:49:12 PM
I hope that the same forces go on to record Bernard Herrmann's ' Symphony No.1'.

Big time! That would be a timely release too, coinciding with both Chandos's traversal of Rózsa's concert music, and also the Havergal Brian revival, whose craggy music has some similarities with Herrmann's symphony.
Peanut butter, flour and sugar do not make cookies. They make FIRE.

Bogey

There will never be another era like the Golden Age of Hollywood.  We didn't know how to blow up buildings then so we had no choice but to tell great stories with great characters.-Ben Mankiewicz