I posted this the other day but took it down because I wanted to add some thoughts. I've been haunted recently by Bernard Herrmann. I go through this from time to time. It's a strange thing to devote a fair amount of one's energy to restoring and preserving another composer's work. I fell into Mr. Herrmann (I WON'T call him Benny! Those who didn't know him personally who call him Benny rub me the wrong way.) I fell into him because I didn't know all that much about him when Robert Townson asked me to conduct that first Seattle Symphony CD 13 years ago. I went out and learned and studied and realized that I was at the base of a very large mountain. I've been climbing bit-by-bit, edging towards understanding and innate familiarity ever since.
My most recent haunting comes while preparing for this summer's concert in Lyons, France of a repeat performance of the Hitchcock/Herrmann evening we did at Barbican Hall last year. I've been trying to tweak the program to make it even more compelling. In doing so, I rediscovered the Concerto Macabre, which Herrmann wrote for a film called Hangover Square. This film concerned a composer, who when he heard high pitch noises, went out on a killing spree. (I have a similar affliction with Hannah Montana) He winds up playing his concerto to his death while the theater burns around him. The concerto ends with the piano solo, orchestra long having fled, in somber, lonely chords. What a Herrmann classic. I just LOVE this piece. (Going to try and find a way to perform it this summer.)
But here’s the strange thing. It seemed so familiar on first hearing. Not because of repeated trademark licks or any such thing, but because after all of the albums and concerts I feel as if, to a VERY small degree, I get how his musical mind worked. I think I've come to understand (to an extent) how he thought about music. I listened to the original Vertigo recording last night, which Herrmann did NOT conduct, (Muir Matheson conducted because of a musician's strike) and I feel in my soul that it is all wrong. The tempi, the phrasing, the lack of infused passion in the playing are all so un-Herrmann. Pure conjecture on my part, I know, and I hope it isn't too presumptuous for me to say what Herrmann liked and didn't, but after so much time with my nose in his scores, can it be that some of his sensibilities have rubbed off? I don't know.
And here's the other thing: Stephen Sondheim, a hero of mine, wrote one of my favorite musicals ever, Sweeney Todd. I wrote a major analysis for my master's degree on this show. I recently came across an article where Sondheim said that Sweeney Todd was in a way based on Herrmann and this Hangover Square concerto, which he had heard when he was fifteen. Amazing. I didn't know why, but I felt the bond in Sondheim and Herrmann's music from day one.
http://website-archive.nt-online.org/platforms/stephensondheim2.html
Now, about our Varese re-recordings. I truly love BH's music, as so many of you do, and I feel it in my soul. I don't mean in any way to suggest I'm channeling him. Far from it. It's a constant challenge. But love or hate our recordings, you can be sure that the intention was always a recording that was a home run. Yup, we completely fell short many times. Some times through my own inability to get the performance I wanted in the time allotted. Some times through no fault of our own. I remember the cab ride back to the hotel in London after finishing Torn Curtain. I was in complete despair. Abbey Road wasn't available and we had to go out to Watford to a town hall to record in. There was no other suitable recording venue. The floors were sticky from beer spilled the night before at a dance. The hall turned out to be much too live for this instrumentation and the recording suffered greatly, in a way that we couldn't mix out. Should this matter? I don't know. But the fact these CDs EXIST is a miracle and that miracle is named Robert Townson. These recordings are truly an altruistic effort on his and Varese's part. We all are doing them for the love only. I will describe at a later date, the flurry of battle and triage that is a re-recording session. It is always about doing the best you can under incredibly demanding circumstances. There is NEVER enough time. Most of the time we are just trying to get it all recorded. It's always amazing to me how many take offense at a variant tempo or sound quality. Imagine committing to memory over an hour's worth of music and then trying to reproduce an exact tempo match from the film on some 30 cues in a score while recording an entire album in 6 hours. Sometimes I have to let go and look at his very specific tempo markings and just let the music fly. At times like these the tempi might differ wildly from the film. However I know from experience that so many non-musical things can happen in a film session to affect the tempo (re-editing, director wanting more pace, less pace) that sometimes the very classical and specific tempo indications were not what wound up in the film at all. How does one reconcile a cue Herrmann marked 'Lentissimo" (extremely slow) that he conducted "Andantino" (a nice walking clip?) What happened at the session to change this? It then becomes a very subjective detective game. Sometimes, as a conductor, the film recording is the 'urtext', to be as best as one can, slavishly matched, but other times not. It's very specific to the music. And always, trying to serve the composer's intent, even if at times, that just means giving it up and going by instinct.