Bernard Herrmann: Whitman / Souvenirs de voyage / Psycho: A Narrative for String Orchestra
Naxos

Of course Bernard Herrmann (1911–1975) is best known for his film scores, with those for Citizen Kane, Psycho, North by Northwest, Vertigo, and Taxi Driver among the most enduring and iconic of the fifty-one he created. But, like many another composer associated with soundtracks, Herrmann created other pieces, most overshadowed by the scores and in danger of being forgotten. This Naxos collection is especially welcome, then, for presenting material that offers very different views of the American composer. Interestingly, the opening one, a radio play collaboration with Norman Corwin, is least recognizable as a Herrmann creation, whereas the other two, the chamber setting Souvenirs de voyage and Psycho: A Narrative for String Orchestra are clearly the work of Hitchcock's oft-used partner.

That there is a discernible difference in signature is explained in part by the years in which they were written, Whitman in 1944 (presented on this world premiere recording in a 2019 reconstruction by Christoper Husted) and the others in the late ‘60s (the Psycho work also a reconstruction, in this case by John Mauceri in 1999), but also because of the formal nature of the pieces. Being a radio play, Whitman required that Herrmann tailor his music to the text, which, selected by Corwin, is based on Leaves of Grass; further to that, Corwin purposely intended for the work's wartime broadcast to rally and inspire American troops in the war effort and is thus consistent with aspects of Whitman's writing, celebratory in tone and democratic in spirit. It wasn't the only production Corwin and Herrmann collaborated on, incidentally. The two began working together in 1939 and created in total twenty-one original radio plays.

Performed by PostClassical Ensemble and its music director Angel Gil-Ordóñez, Whitman is scored for strings, harp, piano, and percussion and is thirty-one minutes long in this performance. The poet's words are delivered by William Sharp with conviction and an appropriate amount of theatricality, with a small number of appearances by two others in the roles of Child, Stranger, Cynic, and Radio Voice. Trademark Whitman passages (“I celebrate myself, and sing myself / And what I assume you shall assume / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you …”) convey his humble, hopeful, all-embracing, and life-affirming message. Herrmann takes his cue from the text, with majestic harmonies and passages mellifluous, lyrical, and poignant underscoring the poet's words, and the composer careful to support and reinforce but not overpower the text.

The music takes a darker turn when the sections dealing with war arise, with morse code communications and radio communications (“Allied losses on land, sea and air to date number more than fifteen million killed…”) joined by military drum patterns to accentuate that shift. In some respects, Whitman invites comparison to Copland's own single-movement voice-with-music setting A Lincoln Portrait, an homage as celebratory in tone. To that end, there are moments in Whitman where Herrmann's writing could be mistaken for Copland's (see, for example, the “Walt Whitman! A cosmos, of Manhattan, the son!” section). There are indisputably moments, however, where the Herrmann that would emerge in Vertigo is present, such as in the plaintive strings that accompany “and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.”

That Vertigo dimension surfaces clearly in the formidable Souvenirs de voyage, a twenty-five-minute live performance executed sensitively by clarinetist David Jones, violinists Netanel Draiblate and Eva Cappelletti Chao, violist Philippe Chao, and cellist Benjamin Capps. The longing expressed so affectingly in Herrmann's Vertigo writing is present in the chamber piece also, never more emphatically than in its opening “Lento: Molto tranquillo.” Suffused with melancholy and tenderness, the material is executed with immense feeling by the quintet as it articulates the music's sensual ebb and flow with nuance, the tremolo-laden shudder of the strings an aching counterpoint to the graceful movements of the clarinet. By comparison, the “Berceuse” is urgent, its longing more intensely expressed, while the concluding “Canto amoroso” captivates when it follows violins crooning a lilting love song with a high-spirited dance episode.

The live performance of Psycho: A Symphonic Narrative for String Orchestra by PostClassical Ensemble is certainly credible, though the playing could be more visceral and savage in the aggressive parts. Those stabbing, scraping strings are front and centre, naturally, as are the also-familiar plaintive passages (plus one arising midway through that could pass for a “Ride of the Valkyries” nod), all of them cozily collected into a neat, sixteen-minute package. Still, as engaging as the Whitman and Psycho treatments are, it's Souvenirs de voyage that registers most powerfully. Here's a work that can stand up against any other chamber classical piece of its time, and one could imagine it holding its own against the string quartets of Ravel and Debussy with no difficulty. Any thought that Herrmann should be spoken of in film composer terms only is certainly challenged by Souvenirs de voyage.

November 2020