Kurt Luchs:
I know you've been producing reissues and re-recordings of Herrmann's
music for some time now. When did you first become involved with his work
personally and professionally? Or to put it another way, what were your
first experiences with Herrmann as a listener and a producer?
Robert Townson:
Well, as a listener I suppose it was (as it was for me with so many of
the Golden Age composers) the George Korngold/Charles Gerhardt recordings,
in this case Citizen Kane: The Classic Film Scores of Bernard
Herrmann. As a series of recordings I don't think that there is another
in film music history to have made such an impact. I mean, really, the
whole film music renaissance that we are still enjoying today can all be
traced back to the work of Korngold and Gerhardt. This was the beginning.
Perhaps single-handedly they introduced the notion that the sound of the
Golden Age may indeed still be relevant. Then a few years later came Star
Wars. If George Korngold could have only lived to see what has developed
today.
As a producer, well, it didn't take long! Of my first five releases,
four of them were Jerry Goldsmith discs, by number six it was time for
Herrmann. And how! That was my four-CD boxed set on Masters Film Music
called Bernard Herrmann: The Concert Suites. Simultaneously I was
working on a CD of Obsession as well. At the time I was not nearly as
prolific as I am now so when I was working on these that was all I was
working on ... for months! Many months! I'm so glad I did that boxed set
when I did. I would never have the time to put something like that
together now. Four CDs ... 52 pages of liner notes, score pages, rare
photos. It was really a joy to work on ... just completely immersing
myself in Herrmann. Then, of course, I topped them both off with cover
paintings by Bob Peak. I think the review I got for these releases from
Page Cook remains the best review I have ever received for anything.
Ever. So that was the beginning. Obviously, at this point it was just
the beginning.
KL:
Did you ever meet him? If so, any anecdotes or impressions?
Townson:
No. I wish I had. I mean, I draw so much from having known
Alex North when working on recordings of his music. It does add a
depth to the experience by involving a personal relationship and
memories. I would say that there is no composer whose music I feel as
passionately about, where I didn't know them personally, as Bernard
Herrmann. I love Herrmann stories. I filled the opening section of
liner notes in The Concert Suites with as many stories and quotes as I
could. They're hilarious. Who knows, maybe if I had met him it may not
have been a positive experience but since we'll never know I'll give
him the benefit of the doubt. Certainly the stories of his gruffness
are legend but I have also found most widely accepted
characterizations of composers I have ended up getting to know well to
be almost entirely inaccurate and shortsighted. I tell you, there's
nothing more priceless than sitting with Jerry Goldsmith and Sidney
Sax and listening to Herrmann reminiscences.
KL:
What particular attraction did you feel for the score to The 7th
Voyage of Sinbad?
Townson:
It's always been one of my favorites and I don't think I'm alone in
feeling that way. It's so rich and vibrant. Herrmann is clearly having fun
with it. I mean, he really just went crazy. It's so witty and charming. He
covers so much ground. I would cite The 7th Voyage of Sinbad as one
of the scores which most validates film music as an art form and a forum
where a great composer can write a great piece of music. As pure
composition I would place Sinbad beside anything else written this
century and not worry about it being able to stand on its own.
KL:
How did you hook up with John Debney and the Royal Scottish National
Orchestra? What was it like working with them? Did you make the trek to
Glasgow? For my money both orchestra and conductor do an outstanding job. I
suspect this is a recording that Herrmann would have loved. Also, can you
say anything about Joel McNeely's departure from this series? The rumor is
that he wanted time to do more of his own composing.
Townson:
Well, my relationship with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra goes
back to ... well ... Vertigo, actually. I was in love with them as
soon as we had finished recording the Prelude. You should have heard
it! The hall we record in is very live. In the room the sound is so rich
and warm ... it really is a better acoustic, a better live sound than any
recording studio or concert hall that I have ever been in. And the
musicians, well, I had known the RSNO from the symphony cycles of Dvorak
and Prokofiev that they had recorded for Chandos. I knew they were a great
orchestra. Sometime early in 1995 they were staging a concert of Patrick
Doyle's music and, since I release most of Patrick's scores, I was
contacted by his agent, Maggie Rodford, about the possibility of recording
the concert program during some recording sessions near the concert date.
Maggie introduced the orchestra's then general manager, Paul Hughes, to me
and we began a dialog on how to do some recording together. Well,
ultimately the Doyle sessions ended up not working out because they could
not be scheduled close enough to the concert for everyone to be able to
remain in town. However, Paul and I kept talking and, finally, were able to
organize some sessions for that September. So trip number one to Scotland
included myself, Joel McNeely and Matthew Peak. We recorded Vertigo
and Hollywood '95. Vertigo, in particular, was very well
received and it was very gratifying that this went on to win
Gramophone magazine's first-ever award for excellence in film music
recording. I can never let an opportunity go by without expressing my love
for this orchestra, all the musicians and the management. I so look forward
to each and every trip. It's such a thoroughly exciting time to wake up in
the morning and know that after breakfast you're going to record
Psycho... the whole thing ... with some of the best musicians in the
world!
John Debney is fabulous and I am so thankful to him. Months of planning
goes into each and every recording trip to Scotland. The amount of music
that needs to be prepared can be enormous! The amount of work ... endless.
Now, while John Debney and I had worked together on albums of his own scores, he
had not been part of my conducting team prior to Sinbad. By the time
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad rolled around I had been to Scotland almost
a dozen times. My accent was coming along nicely. I had been to Glasgow
with Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Joel McNeely, Cliff Eidelman and
that was it. It is important to me to keep an order to my recordings. When
I am going to record an Alex North score it's always going to be Jerry
Goldsmith on the podium. Prior to Sinbad, the same had been true
having Joel McNeely conduct all of my Bernard Herrmann recordings. Well,
things didn't go quite as planned this time. Joel and I departed for
Scotland for a rather out-of-control number of recording sessions. Along
with many other projects on our agenda, we had two more Herrmann scores in
the lineup, The Trouble With Harry and The 7th Voyage of
Sinbad. While Joel and I were still in London recording John Barry's
Body Heat with the LSO at Abbey Road, things took an unforeseen
turn. Joel was going to have to leave to score The Avengers. He
could stay two more days and that was all. Well, that would have him
available to conduct The Trouble With Harry but left me
conductorless for Sinbad and everything else. The transatlantic
phone lines were in for a workout. I remember trying to squeeze in phone
calls to Los Angeles on a cell phone between breaks recording Midway (which
ended up being conducted by Rick Wentworth--an English composer represented
by Maggie Rodford who also dropped everything to come to my rescue) and
Harry. John Debney and I had just finished work on Paulie
before I left. He didn't know what hit him ... he's got me on the phone
saying something like, "Hey John, what are you doing this
weekend?" I needed help and John literally came running. We got him a
set of scores right away and he was hard at work later that same day
studying Bernard Herrmann. Two days later he was in Glasgow!
John would make his Royal Scottish National Orchestra debut conducting
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and the first reading of the Sinbad
overture is one of my favorite moments of any recording session I have ever
been a part of. John raised his arms and the orchestra exploded with sound.
I wish we had recorded that! After that first run-through John was frozen
on the podium. He and I just looked at each other with big smiles on our
faces. It sounded SO great! Once we were done with the Overture we
just had thirty-six more cues to go.
What a debut! I was so excited and so relieved. John and the orchestra
developed an immediate rapport. Also, it was great to see how into the
music John was. That's important to me. I want everyone who works on my
recordings to do it because they want to. Because they love the music and
feel that it's important. It's not a job. It's not a paycheck. That's the
only way to get through it ... otherwise it would kill you. There's not
enough money in the world to go through what I have had to go through for
some of these recordings.
KL:
Long-time Herrmann aficionado and producer John Waxman is mentioned
in the liner notes. What was his contribution to this project?
Townson:
John Waxman has a library of concert music, and among his vast
collection is the concert suite from Sinbad that Herrmann had
recorded himself--the one on The Concert Suites. For the
Overture, Bagdad, The Duel With The Skeleton and The Finale,
we used John's music. Unfortunately, that left everything else for me to
have re-copied from Herrmann's original scores. Once again, all of the
original parts were lost. This was a race to the finish line that got about
as close to disaster as I hope I ever get. John Debney ended up bringing
all of the parts for Sinbad as his "carry-on" luggage on
the plane!
KL:
This recording allowed you to fill in the gaps in the abbreviated
original soundtrack (subsequently rereleased on CD in the late 1980s).
Besides adding previously unreleased cues, did you record longer versions
of some cues than were used in the final edit of the film? I'm thinking
especially of the Overture, which was cut short on the original
soundtrack CD.
Townson:
In every case, including the Overture, we recorded the pieces the
way they were composed. Nothing more. Nothing less. This is always the rule
we stick to: present the music as the composer intended, which may not
necessarily be how it ended up in the film. The Discovery cue from
Psycho is a great example of this. The piece Herrmann composed for
this scene didn't end up in the film. To duplicate what was in the film we
would have had to edit together the murder music at this point on the disc.
But, with all due respect to Alfred Hitchcock, our recording is not Alfred
Hitchcock's Psycho ... it's Bernard Herrmann's.
KL:
Although many previously unreleased cues were added to the new
recording, one cue from the original seems to be missing: Street
Music. Was that left off intentionally, and if so, why?
Townson:
Well, for Sinbad we have not recorded every cue ... almost ...
but not quite. The only thing that makes Street Music stand out more
than the others we have omitted is the fact that, as you say, it did
appear on the other CD. That said, however, we did, frankly, plan on
recording it ... we simply ran out of time. There were actually five other
cues that we didn't get to during the time we had for this recording. We
ended up stealing some time from another recording and squeezing them in.
But for Street Music the clock simply ran out. I wish I could give
some great artistic reason but it's a simple one: when the musicians go
home ... you're finished recording.
KL:
Somewhat uncharacteristically, Herrmann used a mostly conventional
orchestra for this score, augmented by extra percussion, winds and brass.
Did you do any further augmenting?
Townson:
Absolutely not! Never! Herrmann wrote what he wanted. There's no way I
would ever dream of "revising" Herrmann. Bernard Herrmann is
almost the only composer where the scores we work from are in his own
handwriting ... however illegible. I think Georges Delerue may be the only
other. Herrmann made no mistakes ... he wrote in ink on full score. And we
look at these pages as though they are from the Bible.
KL:
Any special problems to be overcome in the recording process that
would be invisible to the average listener? I'm thinking of acoustics, mike
placement, mixing, instrumentation, and how they all interact with the
score.
Townson:
Actually, I find recording Bernard Herrmann's music easier than most.
Maybe easier isn't the right word ... it's more that his music translates
well into a good sounding recording. I think that people would be surprised
by how a composer's, well, let's call them "chops" are shown
during a recording session. There are many problems that you run into
during the course of a making a recording. The music of truly great
composers solves many of these problems for you. They know enough about
music ... about sound and about each instrument ... that they are solving
problems for you in the composition. I mean, there have been pieces I have
had to record written by composers who simply don't think
orchestrationally. You're in a session and your microphones are set up to
reflect a certain orchestra balance. Then a piece comes up that is nowhere
near as complex as something you have recorded previously and all of a
sudden the musicians are having problems playing it and the sound out of
the orchestra sounds like mush. With Herrmann, and in fact most of the
composers whose music I record, they actually write air into their music.
They accommodate the physical sound being produced into the composition.
All of the instruments are exposed ... you can listen through the
orchestra. Sinbad really showed off Herrmann's talents in this
department. So did The Trouble With Harry. This guy really
knew his stuff!
KL:
Is it true that Herrmann was not involved in the original recording
due to the same strike that barred him from leading the sessions for
Vertigo that same year? (And who did conduct the original
Sinbad? Whoever it was, it sure sounds like Herrmann.)
Townson:
That's my understanding but I don't know for sure. I certainly wasn't
there and I didn't put any time into researching the original recording
sessions.
KL:
In general, the new recording seems to follow the original soundtrack
fairly closely in pace and approach. Were there any places you felt it
necessary to depart from the original? And were you working from the
original score or was it necessary to reconstruct it?
Townson:
The scores, as I say, were, in fact, in Herrmann's own hand. They all
existed. We did have to have all of our parts re-copied though. What we
followed were his score markings without worrying about an A/B comparison
with the original recording. Once again, as with Vertigo, since the
original was, in fact, not even conducted by Herrmann, I felt even less of
a responsibility to that performance.
KL:
To the general soundtrack-buying and music-loving public there is
nothing controversial about re-recordings. As you know, however, the
subject can be a contentious one for Herrmann fans. There's been quite a
lot of discussion about it on the AOL film music newsgroup. Do you care to
comment on reissues vs. re-recordings, or don't you have a dog in that
fight? I know you've worked on both, and of course most fans are happy to
buy both, Vertigo being a good case in point.
Townson:
Well, after careful consideration, the argument against re-recordings is
one I refuse to acknowledge. Music is supposed to live and not be sentenced
to death after its first performance. I also think the close-mindedness on
this subject is something held by only a few vocal people. A new recording
and the original recording have nothing to do with each other. I
simply don't understand how someone can endeavor to sentence music written
for a film to one recording and one recording only and then claim this to
be in the best interest of the music and of the composer. My release of a
new recording of Vertigo doesn't stand in the way of any new release
of the original tracks. It didn't even stand in the way of me
releasing a new CD of the original tracks ... even when I already had one
Vertigo in my catalog. As far as I'm concerned, any undertaking of a
new recording, so long as it is done professionally and with care, honors a
composer. There are both positive and negative elements about new
recordings and originals in every case because there is no such
thing as a perfect recording. As you say, I think the vast majority of fans
buy this argument ... as well as the CDs! I have released literally
hundreds of original soundtrack recordings and I have now done quite a
number of new recordings. I will continue to do both.
KL:
An even more petty controversy is the use of reverb on re-recordings.
Torn Curtain took some heat for this (somewhat unjustly, in my
opinion, but I understand how ears differ). It sounds to these ears as if
reverb is kept firmly in check on the new Sinbad recording. Any
thoughts here?
Townson:
We almost never added artificial reverb to our recording. The acoustic
of the hall where we record simply doesn't need it. There is a wonderful
natural reverb. Once again I think that concerns here stem from the fact
that many old recordings were done in rooms too small for them. The sound
is very present but it can be very dry and thin sounding. Simply because
this is how you are used to hearing a score doesn't mean that what may have
even been unfavorable recording conditions for the composer done with
limited recording technology should be duplicated on all future recordings
of that music. The whole mentality of continuing to do something such-and-such
a way just because that's how it's always been done in the past is not
one I ever buy. I do agree that if it ain't broke don't fix it ... but if
you can improve on something or at least have a different and valid point
of view to express, why should you not take advantage of it. When I
finished recording To Kill a Mockingbird with Elmer Bernstein
himself conducting, again using the RSNO and at City Halls, Elmer's first
comments were, "Well, that's the best that that score's ever
sounded!" How can you argue with that?
Torn Curtain was done in London, in Watford actually, and we were
in a foreign hall with the National Philharmonic Orchestra but whose
numbers were so severely altered by Herrmann's music that they barely
resembled themselves. Would I do things differently if I was to record
Torn Curtain again? Sure. But I could say that about every recording
I have ever done. No recording is perfect. On such-and-such a day in
whatever hall we are in and in the time we had, that's the best we could
do. We recorded the score in sequence. That means we started with the
Prelude and it's a very difficult piece. Jonathan Allen was still
fine-tuning the mix. Even the acoustic in our make-shift booth was
unfamiliar. At the time it sounded fabulous. The Prelude is really
the only cue that when I listen to it I wish I could take another crack at
it. I must say that I much prefer working in familiar surroundings. Even
under these conditions or in a controlled environment getting a good
recording of a good performance is hard enough.
KL:
Christopher Husted (another Herrmann veteran) did some fantastic
liner notes for this release. Among other things, he reveals that Herrmann
borrowed from himself for this score--specifically, from two works written
for CBS radio in 1934: The City of Brass, and Egypt: A Tone
Picture. Had you known that? Have you ever heard these works? Do CBS
recordings exist? And is there any chance Varese might favor us with some
of these radio rarities someday?
Townson:
To be honest, I had not been aware of this. I haven't heard either of
these radio works and don't know what their status is as to whether or not
recordings may have survived. As far as what I may or may not get around
to, I think I'll quote the old Varese Sarabande tag line, coined long
before I came on board ... "Expect the Unexpected"
KL:
By the same token, Herrmann later apparently borrowed from the
Arabesque portion of Sinbad's Overture for the love theme from
Marnie. And Steven C. Smith says that both tunes are
"surprisingly similar to the main theme of Leonard Rosenman's 1957
score for Rebel Without a Cause." Do you know anything about
that? Herrmann often borrowed from himself but I don't believe he was in
the habit of lifting from his contemporaries.
Townson:
Well, I do recognize the similarities between all three but don't really
attribute much to it. The treatment in both cases of Herrmann is so
different that the similarity is really is just a footnote. As far as
Rebel Without a Cause, I feel comfortable in chalking that up to the
same sort of coincidence that existed between a piece by Shostakovich
bearing a striking likeness to a piece that Franz Waxman had composed some
years before. This sort of sleuthing doesn't hold much interest for me;
however, there is a line, you know. I hate when people cite examples like
these as an excuse, allowance or justification for what is just shameless
musical thievery.
KL:
Can you talk about Herrmann's use of the Javanese pelog scale for
parts of Sinbad (e.g., in The Egg ), something he had learned
earlier when doing Anna and the King of Siam? And could Herrmann be
called a pioneer for the way he incorporated what today would be called
World Music into some of his scores?
Townson:
That's a good point. He really was one of the first, if not the
first to do this. Franz Waxman certainly contributed to this and I think no
one ultimately did more than Alex North in this regard, with scores like
Viva Zapata!, The Rose Tattoo and A Dream of Kings.
But I think we would be hard pressed to find examples prior to Anna and
the King of Siam. What a great score!
KL:
As Husted notes, "Much of the music is written for small
forces." In the liner notes to the original soundtrack, John Morgan
says it this way: "Rarely does Herrmann use the entire body of the
orchestra for tutti passages: instead he more often utilizes separate
choirs, such as brass or woodwinds..." Can you comment on this most
distinctive of the composer's traits as used in this score?
Townson:
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is a quite extreme example of this. To
record the whole score you need a huge orchestra but then you almost never
use them all. In fact I almost ended up with a revolt from the string
section after recording to many of the Cyclops and Dragon
cues. The brass were blowing their brains out and the violins were reading
their newspapers but with this enormous sound in the room. The
Cyclops ... I have never heard anything so loud! An interesting
physical example of this is that almost all of Herrmann's score pages for
this film are horizontal! Anyway, I tossed in a couple of Princess cues to
give the strings a feeling of purpose, then it was back to Full Metal
Herrmann.
All of this very selective orchestrating was clearly done with great
forethought and for good purpose. It is such a great way to create very
individual character portraits. And when the characters are as extreme as a
Tiny Princess and a giant Cyclops, the music must be equally extreme.
KL:
There is such wild stuff in this music that one can't help wondering
how the orchestra reacted to playing it--say, to the Dragon and
Cyclops cues, where, as Husted says, "the emphasis is entirely
on the raw and guttural timbre!" or to the famous Duel with the
Skeleton, a difficult passage that comes off very well in this
performance. Incidentally, how hard is it to get two xylophones to play
such a frenetic piece in time?
Townson:
The brass had a great time. The woodwinds were kept busy. The
percussionists didn't know what hit them and the strings couldn't wait for
it to all be over. Special mention should be made of our timpani player,
Martin Gibson. He had a real workout on this one. I have to say though that
the sessions did go very smoothly. The music is just so well written
and the orchestra is so wonderful. I was very nervous going into these
sessions given the amount of music we had and the eleventh hour change of
conductor but my concerns turned out to be unfounded. The Duel with the
Skeleton didn't cause a problem. It's definitely a showpiece of the
score, like the murder in Psycho, so we wanted to get it just right.
I'm very happy with it. With the whole CD, in fact. As you can see, we went
with the skeleton duel for Matthew Peak's cover painting as well. It was a
difficult decision. Matthew actually did about half-a-dozen sketches with
different ideas for the cover. I loved them all! But in the end the bones
won. I have been so happy with Matthew's work on this series. Fahrenheit
451, Vertigo, Psycho, Sinbad and The Trouble With Harry... I
think Bernard Herrmann has inspired some of Matthew's best work. Matthew
will be on board for Citizen Kane as well.
KL:
Chronologically, this score falls squarely in the middle of a most
fertile period for Herrmann, the mid-to-late 1950s. Vertigo was just
behind him, North By Northwest and Psycho just ahead. Where
do you think Sinbad fits creatively in his work overall? Graham Bruce
speculates in his book Bernard Herrmann: Film Music and Narrative
that the Harryhausen films gave him an outlet for fantasy and sometimes
humor which was generally denied him throughout his career, and quotes
Herrmann as saying, "The nearest I got to it was Hitchcock's The
Trouble With Harry, and perhaps North By Northwest."
Townson:
I think that Sinbad should always be among the first handful of works
cited when giving examples of Herrmann's best work. I also think that it is
absolutely integral if you want to create any sort of accurate
representation of Herrmann as a composer. I suppose, if forced to be
utterly ruthless, that list would include Citizen Kane, The Ghost and
Mrs. Muir, Vertigo, Psycho and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
Obviously you would indeed need to consider everything to paint a complete
picture but these five scores would do a great job in conveying the gravity
of Herrmann's contribution and in showing his range. In fact, I would go as
far as saying that if these five scores represented Herrmann's entire
career, he would still be revered widely today as one of the greatest and
most influential film composers of all time. Then when you consider what a
small selection of his work this is, you can just start to grasp the
enormity of this man's genius.
KL:
This release is the first of four covering Herrmann's work on the
Charles Schneer and Ray Harryhausen films. Will the other three be released
in their original chronological order? And will there be any music
previously unheard on the Cloud Nine original soundtrack releases of The
Three Worlds of Gulliver and Mysterious Island (from which I
believe the Giant Bee cue was missing)?
Townson:
To be honest I have not put a moment of thought into this. These days I
have so many projects going on all at once that between new films, new
recordings, concerts, pre-production, traveling, post production ... I have
to stay very focused on just what I'm working on at the moment to keep
things from unraveling into chaos. All I know is that there is still a lot
to do ... even if all I was doing was Herrmann. Once Citizen Kane is
released that will clear out all of the Herrmann recordings I have had in
the can, so it will be time to do more.
KL:
What did you learn from this release that you can bring forward into
those other projects?
Townson:
I suppose that if you look at the Sinbad recording as a success
then, in order to duplicate that success with other recordings you might
try to duplicate the recording conditions. That would then call for a badly
jet-lagged conductor who has had almost no time to prepare, a producer who
hadn't slept for two days and had been living on the telephone and on room
service, an equally stressed out recording engineer helping me keep the
sessions from derailing completely and an orchestra who had never worked
with, or even met, for that matter, the conductor. There's the recipe for
success!
KL:
Do you know anything about the Bruce Broughton re-recording of
Jason and the Argonauts scheduled for release on Intrada? Will that
affect your plans at all?
Townson:
Well, I've heard they might be doing it and I think that's wonderful. I
can't wait to hear it if they do. My plans are to record it ... but I have
a lot of plans. Now, the existence of another recording may affect the
urgency with which I schedule it. I had been planning a new recording of
Taxi Driver to be recorded this past spring when I heard about the
expanded Arista release. I am thrilled that Arista did what they did. There
is only one original after all and it's about time that this score was
given a proper release. But that's not to say that I won't proceed with my
own recording someday. One example of this is the new recording of The
Magnificent Seven I did with Elmer conducting the RSNO. The vast
majority of the mail we got when this was announced was of the "Thank
you so much! When is coming out?" variety. But there was a not
insignificant number of comments asking "Why? There is already a good
recording by James Sedares and the Phoenix Symphony." I have to say
that this reasoning really baffles me. With all due respect to Sedares and
his orchestra, my response is, 'So what?" The Sedares record in
wonderful. I have listened to it many times and enjoyed it considerably.
But, and it is a big BUT--there are a limited number of years remaining for
the possibility of a composer conducted recording of The Magnificent
Seven to take place. Even if the Philharmonic orchestras of New York,
Los Angeles, Berlin and Israel as well as the Chicago and London Symphony
had all recorded it with their own conductors, I would have still
done what I did. How could I let this opportunity go by?? To record The
Magnificent Seven with Elmer Bernstein conducting ... how can there be
any question?? The difference here, of course, is that we no longer have
Bernard Herrmann around to conduct.
KL:
Finally, once this release has its chance in the marketplace, would
Varese consider reissuing the original soundtrack, perhaps in an expanded
version?
Townson:
Anything is possible. Once again, as I proved with Vertigo, I
really don't see the two items as related or at least not mutually
exclusive. They are different recordings. I have now produced two
Torn Curtain CDs ... Herrmann's unused score as well as John
Addison's. I would say, though, that I think Vertigo is one score I
am finished with. I released the only Bernard Herrmann conducted
performance of it on The Concert Suites boxed set. I recorded the
score with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, I released a greatly
expanded CD of the original tracks and I have programmed excerpts of the
score into concerts I have produced. I think that about covers it. But
never say never.
