Bernard Herrmann - Psycho: The Complete Original Motion Picture Score
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Free Music Notes for Psycho: The Complete Original Motion Picture Score
Free Music Review: Herrmann's Famous Score Complete on CD
Hit: 5 Stars
My favorite classic movie scores are Leonard Bernstein's for ON THE WATERFRONT (1954), Alfred Newman's for THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (1959) - and Bernard Herrmann's for PSYCHO (1960). Herrmann composed his all-strings, "black-and-white" score at around the same time he wrote the hauntingly beautiful music for such memorable episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE as "Walking Distance" and "The Lonely." The parts of the extensive PSYCHO score that stayed with me most after seeing the movie for the first time were the "flight" theme (when Marion Crane, after having embezzled money, is fleeing in her car from the police); the "temptation" theme (heard as the camera focuses on the stolen money lying on Marion's bed); and, of course, the squealing violins of the two famous murders: Marion's (in the shower) and Detective Arbogast's (on the stairs). All of that music - and in fact, the entire movie score - is captured vividly in this 1996 recording by Joel Mc Neeley and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The recorded sound is spacious, the strings lush in the almost-Romantic "Marion" and "Marion and Sam" themes. So great is the PSYCHO score that it fully deserved this complete, modern recording. Let's hope that Mc Neeley and his orchestra record Herrmann's TWILIGHT ZONE themes, too. Free Music Review: Definative
Hit: 5 Stars
Spectacular re-recording of what remains one of the most recognizable and imitated film scores of all time. As usual with McNeely and the RSNO, the performance is both electrifying and exact, and the recording is spot on. Herrmann felt that Hitchcock's black-and-white film needed an equally black-and-white score, so he removed the "color" from the orchestra by limiting his writing strictly to the string section. What he accomplished was amazing in its ability to manipulate one's primal emotions, with or without the film. From the panic-stricken opening titles, through the long passages of drawn-out suspense, to the famous murder "stings," few other scores have done so much to build and shape the overall mood and movement of a movie. This completed Herrmann's trilogy of masterpieces for Hitchcock films, the prior ones being 'Vertigo' and 'North by Northwest.' If the former was his most darkly romantic, and the latter his most light-hearted and adventurous, then this one is easily the bleakest and most relentlessly single-minded. Yet it holds up splendidly as a stand-alone piece of work, brought to life once again under McNeely's direction. I'm not usually a fan of re-recordings, but he and the RSNO seem to get Herrmann's work just right time and again. A must-own if you love film music.Free Music Review: AT THE TOP OF THE ART OF FILM SCORING
Hit: 5 Stars
Can one deny that Bernard Herrmann's score to "Psycho" belongs in the top five of all-time great film scores? I think not.Joel McNeely and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra have performed the score masterfully with every thrilling, as well as subtle, chord.
Purists may "scoff" that this rendition differs from the one conducted by Herrmann in the film, and to them I say "So what?"
This is merely one ensemble's interpretation of the work of a master as seen and played through the eyes of composer/arranger McNeely.
In other words, it's worth the money to buy and savor one's purchase!
Free Music Review: Better than some...
Hit: 4 Stars
Varese records has produced many recordings of old movies and even a soundtrack to a book (Star Wars Shadows of the Empire). Some recordings have been hit and miss others have been excellent. This recording fall into the excellent category, the music has a great feel of the movie and the digital sound is a plus. I felt that Joel McNeely and his RSO were actually recording the music for the actual movie themselves. Great work!!Free Music Review: The masterpiece of mystery music
Hit: 5 Stars
It's hard to believe they gave Bernard Herrmann a small orchestra and he worked it out to make a masterpiece in film music! The score resulted in a genious orchestration of strings and high violins that matches with Hitchcock's film in a perfect way. Joel McNeely rerecords the score very similar to the original, and that is good since we don't have any other score available.
It must be remembered that Psycho soundtrack is much more than the infectuous music for the shower scene, anyone who has seen the mov will agree with with me. It has a great deal of fantastic mystery music, like the one used in "Temptation" or even the variations of the main theme used in the runaway cues, which create a very quick, suspenseful mood. My personal fave is "The Car", what a sound!
The score never develops to an comforting romantic cue, however "Marion and Sam" gives a lighter touch of their troubled romance.
It must be said that the "murder" themes are very similar to the original in the mov (they sound strong, and that's good) with the exception of "Discovery" part, where you'll not find the strings of the shower scene, there is instead the original music Herrmann wanted.
That's what it is-tam tam tam tam tam! That's how begins this must have score!