This is one of the best value
releases of Bernard Herrmann's music that I've found, featuring
two lengthy suites and one complete score album filling the disc
up to a respectable 76 minutes.Starting with the two suites; the first of which is a mixture of music from Citizen Kane and The
Magnificent Ambersons in a specially arranged selection
that rather highlights the more buoyant sections of both scores.
While it doesn't make for a particularly representative selection,it is extremely enjoyable.
The Devil and Daniel
Webster (known in some parts as All the Money
Can Buy) was Herrmann's only Oscar winning score and
this is about the most lengthy representation of music that has
appeared legitimately. Like the Welles Raises Kane
suite, this is not very typical of Herrmann's output; a lot of over the top comically malevolent hoe-downs and macabre fun. The central cue and the one most often
recorded on compilations is Swing Your Partners which is a
slightly psychotic hoe-down that is central to the story. I very much hope that some more expanded release of this
score appears at some point, we can hardly let Herrmann's only
recognition at the Oscar's go unreleased. I suspect the original
session tapes are in pretty poor condition by now, so a decent
re-recording would be warmly welcomed. As Herrmann recorded a lot of his
scores with London orchestras, it means that we can afford the
luxury of all these releases and re-releases without huge amounts
of re-use fees. In this case it's just as well since the original
release of Obsession is extremely difficult to
come by these days (as far as I can tell). Brian De Palma is, to
all intense and purposes a Hitchcock imitator, taking many of
Hitch's greatest techniques and applying them to his own films.
In this instance, he not only took a similar story (based mainly
on Vertigo), but he also borrowed one of Hitch's
greatest other assets, Bernard Herrmann. Whatever the merits
of the film and its similarity or not with the original, one
thing that is very different is Herrmann's score. Rather than
using the undulating and unending central motif, Herrmann
concocts an entirely different sound world, one that uses a few
imposing extras to the orchestra. The most notable at first is
the cathedral organ which is absolutely thunderous (especially
when the timpani bolster the lower registers). The second, is the
addition of a large female choir that lifts the whole
proceedings. I wouldn't exactly say the choir was heavenly, more
spectral and hair raising.
As a complete contrast to this
thundering orchestration is the lithe Valse Lente which seems strangely
familiar, but I cannot think where I might have heard it before.
Whatever the case, it is a slightly sombre, but wistful
and romantic waltz that is brief but affecting. From these basic
ingredients, Herrmann constructs a complex score that appears to
have the distinction of having some of the longest cues ever to
appear, two are both over 8 minutes, but are so marvelous pass
all too rapidly. As with most Herrmann scores of this nature
there are elegiac string passages, but also more furious moments,
most notably in the latter half of track 12, presumably
associated with the section coming under the title of The Ferry.
This is a superb score and shows that Herrmann lost none of his
touch in his later years, although I suspect that a score like
this today would to modern ears sound a little anachronistic in a
contemporary movie. It isn't one of Herrmann's most well known
scores, but it is absolutely worth searching out and finding. The entire album is one that
can't be recommended enough, it is full to the brim with Herrmann
at his best, from his most sublime to his most humorously
macabre. The two suites are re-recordings, but as mentioned,
aren't recorded in quite the up front manner of the Phase 4 recordings
and coupled with more suitably paced and lengthier selections
makes them preferable over other compilation renditions. Obsession
is one of the most highly rated Herrmann scores by his fans, but
one of the least known by everyone else, I was staggered at how
good it was compared to what I expected. If I had to make a minor
criticism it would be that Obsession isn't mixed
as high as it might be and could perhaps do with a little
remastering so that the cathedral organ and timpani boom as
portentously as Herrmann intended. However, that minor gripe
aside, an excellent album worth finding above even some of
Herrmann's more famous fare. Rating ~ Total Time ~ 76:16
Welles Raises Kane
The Devil and Daniel Webster
Obsession