Has any composer being “rerecorded” as much as Benny Herrmann? His work really lends itself well to nice large orchestras and I really love most of what I have. These are the rerecordings I have, are they any really good score recordings that I’m missing?
Battle of Neretva Bernard Herrmann Anthology (all 3 volumes) Bernerd Herrnann – The Concert Suites Bernard Herrmann: The Film Scored (Esa-Pekka Salonen) Citizen Kane (McNeely) Citizen Kane (LeRoy Holmes) Citizen Kane: The Essential Bernard Herrmann Film Music Collection Fahrenheit 451 (Morgan & Stromberg) Film Fantasy – Film Music by Bernard Herrmann Garden of Evil Jason and the Argonauts (Broughton) Marnie (McNeely) Mysterious Island (Tribute) North by Northwest (VS) Psycho (McNeely) The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (VS) The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (VS) The Day The Earth Stood Still The Egyptian The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Elmer Bernstein) Torn Curtain (Elmer and McNeely) Vertigo (McNeely)
Plus the Gerhardt recordings and one Elmer Bernstein CD.
Some folks weren't happy with McNeely's rerecordings of TORN CURTAIN, THE TWILIGHT ZONE SCORES, and MARNIE, so there might be some debate regarding those choices.
I myself liked Nic Raine's Tadlow rerecording of OBSESSION, but not everybody did.
I also like Quartet's THE BRIDE WORE BLACK, but I'm not too familiar with either the film or the score itself, so I wasn't aware of errors that bothered some listeners.
Another rerecording that I like is Herrmann's own rerecording of PSYCHO on Unicorn, but many found the tempo to be too slow.
One of my favorite collections of Herrmann rerecordings is the Salonen collection of Herrmann scores performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
I like James Conlon recording of VERTIGO - it is the only recording of that score that is complete and it is very close to the film recording in performance/tempo (while the McNeely excellent recording is supposedly closest to Herrmann's original manuscripts - but unfortunately misses some very good tracks). The issue is that the James Conlon recording was only available with the book "Feature Film" that is not so easy to find nowadays.
I can never remember James Conlon's name, having never had that particular rerecording. I assume that it's a pricey item these days, if you can even find it.
Has James Conlon done anything else of note? I only see his name mentioned in terms of VERTIGO.
But, surprise surprise, most of the recordings of his I fell in love with are out of print. Some of my favorites of his are the series of recordings of the orchestral works of Alexander von Zemlinsky (a teacher/mentor of Erich Wolfgang Korngold). ArkivMusic still has a page up for a great 3-disc budget set on EMI (which is what I bought some years ago)...no copies available from them but you can read the review excerpts they collected: http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=186427
The Bruce Broughton and London Sinfonia recording of JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, released by Intrada, is an absolute stunner. It's so close to perfection and matching the movie, it'd be as if the exact same movie was made today, scored by Herrmann and recorded in modern high fidelity.
I'm also a big fan of McNeely recording of NORTH BY NORTHWEST, which was a limited release on Varese. I pretty much always listen to this version over the original tracks.
I love the "Welles Raises Kane" album by Herrmann, with music from CITIZEN KANE, MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and OBSESSION.
The problem with the McNeely albums are the extreme dynamic range, and glacial pauses between cues.
If you tastefully apply limiting and compression, and tighten up the transitions, some of those albums really come alive.
I applied this approach to McNeely's "The Day the Earth Stood Still," and also jettisoned the mood-busting patriotic tracks. The resulting album is now my go-to version of that score.
But as I've written elsewhere, it should not be the listener's job to finish someone else's album. I've had to do this kind of thing too often.
