There are of course many albums of music available containing music from the films of Alfred Hitchcock, although few if any contain music taken from the original scores. Almost all of the tracks, except for one or two, on this album are taken from the original recordings conducted by the composers. The music for Hitchcock's films is some of the best ever written for cinema, although I always feel with Hitchcock orientated albums, they serve to show why Bernard Herrmann was one of the greatest composers for cinema.
The Herrmann entries are of course, all superb and mostly from the original scores. The only ones that aren't are the strangely ponderous Narrative for Orchestra from Psycho and the delightful Portrait of Hitch made up of Herrmann's lightest score for a Hitchcock film, The Trouble with Harry. Perhaps the most interesting inclusions for Herrmann fans are the original tracks from Marnie and the rejected Torn Curtain. Both have now received re-recordings, but fans of Herrmann in particular are often fussy about re-recordings, so these present for the first time as originally conducted by Herrmann for the film. Marnie starts with an Prelude that is by turns agressive and romantic. Marnie is much more romantic and recalls the gorgeous romantic material of Herrmann's masterpiece, Vertigo. Torn Curtain was rejected by the studio and ended Herrmann's partnership with Hitchcock which is one of the great tragedies of film music history. Hearing the exceptionally bracing original performance of the Prelude does at least indicate why, at least sometimes, re-recordings fail to capture the energy of the original. The two other entries from the score are fairly quiet affairs and it's disappointing that the music for the killing sequence wasn't included. The masters for both Marnie and Torn Curtain appear to be in good condition and with any luck will see the light of day before long. The Prelude from John Addison's replacement Torn Curtain is included, but falls well short of the drama of Herrmann's, even if it is perfectly serviceable on its own terms.
The Wrong Man is about as atypical a piece of Herrmann as I can think of. It's a bouncy rumba type thing, which is given an amusing performance under the baton of Elmer Bernstein. The two entries composed by Dimitri Tiomkin are pretty unexciting and certainly don't suggest any kind of menace or mystery. Juke Box 6 from Read Window by Franz Waxman is a short jazz cue that doesn't appear to either represent the score, nor fit in with the rest of the album and should probably be avoided, nice though it is. Maurice Jarre's March from Topaz is a rousing Russian march, given an exciting performance by the City of Prague Philharmonic, as is the the lovely London Theme from Ron Goodwin's Frenzy, even if it doesn't call to mind any kind of frenzy as such. John Williams had the fortune to score Hitch's last film, Family Plot and managed to come up with a highly entertaining harpsichord and choir mixture that mirrored the spooky double crossing onscreen. Of all the tracks here, this is probably the one that is much better in subsequent re-recordings either on Varese or Silva Screen, the performance being merely fine, but the recording curiuosly poor given that it's the most recent of the original album recordings.
Herrmann fans will find just about enough interesting archival material here to warrent a purchase, but likely induce the requirement to hear the full scores, especially for Marnie and Torn Curtain. Hitch fans will probably delight in having a selection of music from his films and casual fans will hopefully discover some great music, even if most of it will be by Bernard Herrmann. The liner notes provide some details about each film and are well worth reading.
Rating ~ 
Total Time ~ 62:36