Music To Be Murdered By

[Gerald Lovell]

I was so pleased to attend an excellent concert held on Sunday at City Halls, Glasgow with film music maestro John Wilson conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in a programme celebrating the music of Bernard Herrmann on the hundredth anniversary of Herrmann's birth.

We heard very faithful renditions of music from North by Northwest, Vertigo, Hangover Square (the superb Concerto Macabre played by Ben Dawson), Psycho, Marnie and Taxi Driver plus David Raksin's Laura, All About Eve by Alfred Newman, Ben Hur by Miklos Rozsa (a bit of a non sequitur, but a great ending to the first half of the concert), Anna Karenina by Constant Lambert and Richard Rodney Bennett's Murder on the Orient Express.

The concert was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland's DRESS CIRCLE on 30th October for those of you that can tune in to that.

The Saturday night had the string section of the orchestra under John Wilson's baton for a live performance of Herrmann's Psycho music as the film was shown on a large screen with only dialogue and sound effects tracks. It was a marvellous experience, despite the video breaking down for a few minutes about a third of the way in. It was interesting to note the choices that Herrmann and Hitchcock made when spotting the music tracks for the film originally, although I know the shower scene was to have no music until Herrmann proved to Hitchcock it was better with the famous "nyees"!

A glorious couple of concerts featuring some music I thought I'd never hear performed live.

[Nick Dando]

John Wilson, who I'd not come across before, seems to be having a bumper year. He conducted quite a number of the concerts from the BBC Radio 3 Light Music Festival earlier this year, which I recorded for my father - 20 CDs in total!

And he also conducted at least one of the Proms concerts about film music - the Hollywood musicals one. And he's only a nipper, too.

Nick

[Heinrich]

...

The Saturday night had the string section of the orchestra under John Wilson's baton for a live performance of Herrmann's Psycho music as the film was shown on a large screen with only dialogue and sound effects tracks. It was a marvellous experience, despite the video breaking down for a few minutes about a third of the way in. It was interesting to note the choices that Herrmann and Hitchcock made when spotting the music tracks for the film originally, although I know the shower scene was to have no music until Herrmann proved to Hitchcock it was better with the famous "nyees"! ...

I too was lucky enough to attend an identical screening of Psycho with a live orchestra last year. I am not surprised to read that Hitchcock did not want music for the shower scene as his relationship with Herrmann was never smooth, made all the worse because Hitchcock was always wrong when he disagreed with Herrmann without whose music many of the pictures would not have been successful. It culminated with Hitchcock dismissing Herrmann on the set of Torn Curtain, one of Hitchock's miserable flops.

Notice how ridiculous the murder scene is without Herrmann's music as shown in cinemas, almost comical how they gassed the East German security officer.

[siriami]

I was at the "Music To Be Murdered By" Glasgow concert too - outstanding, in every sense. The SSO were magnificent, and it was like being back on the old Hollywood scoring stages - a magnificent recreation of the Golden age of the Hollywood film score.
Alistair

[Gerald Lovell]

John Wilson is a real star in bringing back film music from the past: in many cases in his earlier concerts, the scores had been destroyed and he pieced them together again by ear. I was interested to learn his love of film music came from his discovery of the Charles Gerhardt series of soundtrack LPs, which is exactly how I encountered many of the wonderful scores of Korngold, Steiner, Newman and Herrmann for the first time.

I thought the presenter of the concert, Jamie MacDougall, although very professional and relaxed in his role, was rather unfair to John, making a few barbed references to his supposedly great age, his suit and his being "the oldest swinger in town", especially, as Nick points out above, John is a young chap (late 30s).

[siriami]

I agree with Gerald about the presenter - but it is a small quibble that didn't spoil a perfect film music concert.
And now UK members can watch part 1 of the concert via this link - enjoy!

BBC - Programmes - BBC SSO Listen and Watch, Music to be Murdered By Part 1

Alistair

Now, if only someone would upload this to YouTube -and I could download it!

[siriami]

and now - part 2

BBC - Programmes - BBC SSO Listen and Watch, BBC SSO Presents Music to be Murdered By Part 2

Alistair