Bernard Herrmann

Bernard Herrmann jumped from working at CBS radio to RKO studios in one fell swoop in 1940-1941, courtesy of Orson Welles and Citizen Kane, and managed to earn two Oscar nominations in one year, winning for The Devil and Daniel Webster -- he had the world at his feet, and then blew it by interceding in the dispute between Welles and the studio over the recutting of The Magnificent Ambersons. The only time he returned to RKO over the ensuing three decades was to write and conduct the score for On Dangerous Ground (1951) -- producer John Houseman and production chief Jerry Wald were so unsure about the appeal of Nicholas Ray's movie that they wanted the strongest score possible, and Herrmann was ultimately engaged for the project. This CD marks the first release of the resulting score, retrieved from the only surviving sources, 16" acetates and 12" transcription discs prepared for the composer's convenience, of which the former are the highest quality but were only ever intended to be played two or three times at most, and have also sustained the most damage. The CD's producers apologize profusely for the sound quality at almost every turn, but this reviewer found this disc to be eminently listenable and downright essential listening -- one of Herrmann's more jarring and moving scores, the music for On Dangerous Ground shifts wildly, from the jarring stop-and-start main title theme to the dark depictions of the central character's psyche, in "Solitude" and the extended "Nocturne." Those tracks, and the brilliant "Hunt Scherzo," all make effective use of winds, and the string section of the orchestra, with the latter track anticipating elements of Herrmann's scores for Obsession, North by Northwest, and Marnie -- Herrmann even finds room for a jazz trumpet in one place. The highlight of this score, however, are the sections such as "Blindness" or "The Searching Heart" that utilize the solo vioa d'amore, played by Virginia Majewski, some of Herrmann's most moving, subtle, and finely textured writing for film -- despite the shortcomings of the source material in terms of noise, those tracks come out beautifully here, and bear repeated listening; one comes away not at all surprised that Herrmann insisted on Majewski's getting an on-screen credit. This limited-edition CD is essential listening for any fan of Herrmann, and a must-own item for anyone who has ever listened on a serious level to any of his music, or for more general fans of film noir, of which the movie is considered a classic; the producers have even managed to retrieve a set of alternate takes and unused sections of the soundtrack, and appended them after the main body of the piece. The annotation is extremely thorough, providing not only a detail sketch of Herrmann's life and career up to that point but also a detailed pre- and post-production history of the film. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide