Bernard Herrmann: Suite from ‘Wuthering Heights' / Echoes for Strings
Chandos

When conversation turns to the Psycho score, it's the shrieking violins accompanying the shower scene that spring instantly to mind. But music of intense atmosphere and foreboding also distinguishes the soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann (1911-75) during the film's less violent episodes. The material he composed for Hitchcock's Vertigo is as renowned, in this case for expressive music of profound longing, and the romantic parts of his scores for Obsession, North By Northwest, and others also speak to his monumental gift for writing in that mode. Those with a particular love for that side of the composer will therefore find this hour-long treatment—the suite created by Hans Sørensen in 2011 and recorded here for the very first time—of his opera Wuthering Heights (1943-51) to be, frankly, irresistible. The tragic tone of Emily Brontë's 1847 novel is captured vividly by the score in this terrific realization.

In liner notes, David Benedict refers to Herrmann's music as “ardent, unfashionably romantic music.” That it could possibly be deemed unfashionable is a shame: music of such splendour has never sounded more ravishing than when delivered by the Mario Venzago-conducted Singapore Symphony Orchestra and soprano Keri Fuge and baritone Roderick Williams as the tormented lovers Cathy and Heathcliff. Whereas the eight solo roles in the full opera are reduced to two for the suite, Sørensen otherwise retains the large orchestral forces prescribed by Herrmann: twelve woodwinds, eleven brass instruments, percussion, two harps, and organ. Adding to the release's appeal, the suite's accompanied by Echoes (1965), the Singapore Symphony Orchestra conducted in this case by Joshua Tan. Originally composed for string quartet, the work was arranged for string orchestra by Sørensen in 2011 and advances through ten parts during its twenty-minute span. Both performances have been beautifully captured by Chandos's production team.

Atmosphere is paramount in the suite, which adheres to the opera's chronology and opens with an ominous prologue of muted brass, thunderous timpani, and a haunting flute motif. After Heathcliff desperately calls for the ghost of his love's return (“Oh, Cathy! Come in”), the narrative jumps back twenty years to 1840 and an enchanting pastoral scene where the lovers rapturously sing (“I have been wandering through the green woods”), Fuge captivating immediately with her voluptuous voice and Williams impressing with his resonant, expertly controlled baritone. Herrmann's strings and woodwinds envelop the two with painterly gestures and reinforce the amorous nature of the singers' words. Nuance is shown in the restraint of the composer's orchestration, which in being used sparsely supports the emotional expressions of the lovers. Occasional undercurrents of tension and anxiety surface to hint at the tragic events to come, but for the most part the opening act's first scene is rhapsodic, even dreamlike (during a mystical moonlit episode, Heathcliff declares, “Heaven itself is calling us tonight”).

The elegiac ache of the music rises dramatically as the work advances and Cathy, foretelling illness and death, muses about being in heaven and longing “to see the heath again” (“And the angels flung me back to earth, and Wuthering Heights, where I awoke sobbing ... sobbing ... for joy”). Against a plaintive orchestral backdrop, she asks her partner, “Will you be happy when I am in the earth?” and, dying, comforts Heathcliff, telling him “I shall be with you always / I shall be with you on the moors, and in summer we shall walk together under the sky.” Grief becomes anguish for Heathcliff as he rages at her death (“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living”) and suffers her ghostly pleas thereafter (“Heathcliff! Heathcliff! Let me in”). Throughout the hour-long presentation, Herrmann's music faithfully mirrors the emotional trajectory of the narrative (consider, for example, how the music dies away as Cathy takes her last breath and the fury that accompanies Heathcliff in the immediate aftermath) and often programmatically suggests elements of the natural world (wind, snow, etc.).

Echoes perpetuates the brooding character of the suite as it moves through its ten sections, referencing as it does the scores for Vertigo and Psycho. After a hushed intro, a waltz episode allows a smidgen of sunlight to enter without dissipating tension and lessening the sense of dread. A Spanish figure recalls the moment in Vertigo when Scottie shadows Madelaine during her visit to the art museum. Ominous string accents similarly recall parts of Psycho where quiet precedes a violent rupture, after which agitated figures call to mind the inner turmoil Scottie experiences before the tragic visits to the tower. In all such cases, the scores are more alluded to than quoted directly, a wise choice by Herrmann as Echoes would perhaps be too disjointed otherwise. Stated otherwise, nodding subtly to the other works helps ensure Echoes retains its cohesiveness and integrity as an independent work.

September 2023