This is a new compilation of all previously released selections. Although
regular Silva customers will know this to be so, we feel the company should
make this point clear on their packaging. The release has clearly been assembled
to celebrate the centenary of Hitch’s birth and in that respect it performs
a valuable service because CD1 has some unusual and interesting material
paralleling the HIP-O CD reviewed above. Silva have now deleted the original
albums on which they were included. Silva also assure me that every track
has been re-mastered in Dolby sound and HDCD. Quite a few selections have
been re-edited even to the extent, in one case, of adding a fragment of
orchestral texture.
CD1 commences with Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette (not
‘the’ as is printed on the CD). Here, the City of Prague Philharmonic
play it in full. There are four selections from Hitch’s British films.
First there is Jack Beaver’s score for The
Thirty-Nine Steps which is exciting and menacing enough
with some romantic and vaudeville elements. Philip Lane develops Charles
Williams and Louis Levy’s brief and fragmentary music for The
Lady Vanishes so that it emerges here as a miniature piano concerto
very much in the popular style of the day. Lane also reconstructs and
orchestrates Louis Levy’s Stage Fright Rhapsody compiled
from the music he scored for the film. Finally there is Richard Addinsell’s
sentimental Celtic-flavoured music for Under Capricorn. But
all these scores pale in contrast to the more dynamic music from the Hollywood
composers. The most intriguing is the little known music of Hugo Friedhofer
for Lifeboat (again a Lane reconstruction). This is a very
powerful evocation of the sinking freighter at the beginning of the film
with the swirling waters vividly caught; so, too, is the plight of the few
survivors crammed together in the lifeboat.
It has to be said that Silva face formidable competition in many of these
tracks especially the Herrmann selections. Remaining with CD1, Gerhardt delivers
a more polished version of Waxman’s Rebecca;
Waxman’s Suspicion fares somewhat better as does
the David Buttolph arrangement of Poulenc’s music for
Rope. However, I much prefer the George Korngold-produced 16
minute suite from Strangers on a Train in a cracking, tense
performance by Charles Ketchum on a 1985 Varèse Sarabande recording.
(This Alfred Hitchcock album is now deleted – if you see a copy anywhere
don’t hesitate snap it up!) I did like the Bateman’s reading of
the other Tiomkin score - for Dial M for Murder, a dynamic,
startling rendition of this dark and highly evocative music. Franz Waxman’s
jazz-based ‘Lisa’ for Rear Window makes a pleasant
conclusion to CD1.
Much of CD2 is made up of Herrmann material which has been reviewed fairly
recently. There are creditable performances of the music from
Vertigo, Psycho, Marnie, North by Northwest, The Man
Who Knew Too Much, The Trouble With Harry, and
Torn Curtain - all widely available elsewhere and best performed
by the composer himself. The most interesting track is Lyn Murray’s
sparkling sophisticated music for To Catch a Thief. The rest
of CD2 is made up of a stirring rendition of Jarre’s so-so March from
Topaz, a nice stately reading of Ron Goodwin’s London
theme from Frenzy and John Williams’ witty end titles
for Family Plot – oh and a good iron-hard sounding main
title for Torn Curtain as written by John Addison, and actually
used by Hitch. A variable collection
Reviewer
Ian Lace
SILVA SCREEN 2CDs FILMXCD 320 [132:49]
