Customer Reviews

Bernard Herrmann: The Twilight Zone (Television Series Score Re-recording)

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These two CDs features some of the best television music ever composed and wonderfully rich and clean sound. I feared these recordings would be arrangements for full orchestra of the classic Twilight Zone soundtracks and would leave something missing of the chamber atmospheric recordings. I was glad that the producers decided to be so faithful to the original scores. When compared to the original scores conducted by Herrmann himself, these records lack some of the "bite" that Herrmann adds, but this works wonderfully in the luminous "Walking Distance" suite. The slower tempo really brings out the nastalgia of the score. Highly recommended for fans of the Twilight Zone or Bernard Herrmann.

Conductor Joel McNeely already gave us splendid versions of Herrmann's Vertigo and The Trouble with Harry, both available on Varèse. This new Twilight Zone CD is a winner all the way. Here you will find every single note Herrmann wrote for Rod Serling's landmark television anthology. This 2CD set displays an incredible range of moods, from the quietly unsettling "main title" to the aching lyricism of "Walking Distance", perhaps one of Herrmann's most eloquent compositions ranking along "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" and "Obsession". The 20bit digital recording is cristal clear and gives full justice to Herrmann's transparent orchestrations. For the first time you will hear every subtle nuances thanks to Joel McNeely's conducting style, so fateful to Herrmann's own musical design. One minor quibble: I find the elegy from "Walking Distance" a bit too slow for my liking. But nevertheless, this CD is a real gem. The cover design is very evocative and the liner notes are very informative. This CD belongs to every TZ or Bernard Herrmann fan. A masterpiece of atmosphere and magic that will take you to an area between light and shadow... the Herrmann zone!

Bernard Herrmann stands apart from many of his contemporaries because his scores could, for the most part, stand apart from the films that they accompanied. His composing skills were so great the he created mini-symphonies for the films assigned him. He thoroughly understood the technique of composing for film and how the music was integral to a story's success.

Nowhere is this more evident than in his scores for the classic Twilight Zone on this two-disc set. "Where is Everybody?" expresses the main character's bewilderment at being in a deserted town. Many of the cues for that episode are reminiscent for Herrmann's work in Jason and the Argonauts" and "Psycho".

"Walking Distance" is prime Herrmann as the music evokes the tale of a man revisiting his past. Herrmann always effectively used strings and contrasting horns to create a mood.

The surprise of finding companionship, as well as the results of losing the same, is brought to life by Herrmann's complex treatment for "The Lonely".

The dreamlike quality of the score to "Eye of the Beholder" is perfect for the tale of a hospital patient anxiously awaiting the results of her plastic surgery.

Disc Two features Herrmann's compositions for three other memorable episodes; however, these creations pale when compared to those that preceded them.

But still, sub-par Herrmann is better than anything before or since.

I thoroughly enjoyed Joel Mc Neeley's recording of Bernard Herrmann's PSYCHO score, so I was thrilled to discover that the conductor also recorded Herrmann's scores for THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Herrmann was one of THE TWILIGHT ZONE's most prolific composers, having written the original theme music and the scores for eight individual episodes (only one of which, "The Hitch-Hiker," is regrettably not represented on this two-CD set). Mc Neeley's set opens with Herrmann's first version of the TWLIGHT ZONE theme (used during the series' initial season), with its familiar low final chord. The next sixteen tracks present Herrmann's score for the series' pilot episode, "Where Is Everybody?" Dream-like bewilderment is (as a previous reviewer suggested) the primary emotion this score, with its recurring three-note motif, captures. And it is true that Herrmann anticipates PSYCHO in several cues, particularly "The Mirror" and "The Bookrack." "Walking Distance," Herrmann's most highly acclaimed TWILIGHT ZONE score, follows "Where Is Everybody?" The episode tells the story of a weary businessman who revisits his hometown only to find it unchanged from the days of his youth. The episode is perhaps Rod Serling's finest, and Herrmann's music for it is pure nostalgic beauty, with not a hint of cloying.
Herrmann gives "The Lonely," an episode about a man imprisoned on an asteroid who receives a robot woman for a companion, a uniquely beautiful score, in which the notes played by the vibraphones and harps resemble stars. Herrmann's soundscape here truly suggests the "vastness of space." From the asteroid, we move back to Earth - to the hospital room of Miss Janet Tyler, a woman undergoing plastic surgery to repair her "deformed" face in "The Eye of the Beholder." Herrmann here uses basically the same instruments and one of the same motifs as in "The Lonely," but to express confinement rather than space - loneliness of a different kind, in other words. The first disc ends with Herrmann's original version of the series' closing theme, with its final notes played by horns.
The second disc contains three of the four Herrmann scores (the fourth being "The Eye of the Beholder") which had not been recorded since the composer made his original soundtrack recordings for the respective episodes. "Little Girl Lost" is a fascinating, semi-Romantic score. In it, flutes, harps, viola, and percussion all combine to depict the mysterious "other dimension" into which little Bettina Miller falls one night after being tucked into bed, and from which her father ultimately rescues her. Herrmann ingeniously uses a waltz motif and trills on a bass clarinet in "Living Doll," an episode about a cruel stepfather who comes to a bad end trying to destroy Talky Tina, his stepdaughter's malicious doll. After such a spare (it uses only three instruments) and ominous-sounding score it is a relief to hear the final tracks, which present Herrmann's last score for THE TWILIGHT ZONE, for the episode called "Ninety Years without Slumbering." Here Herrmann was inspired by a children's song, "My Grandfather's Clock," variations of which he uses to depict the emotions of an old man who believes that he will die when his heirloom grandfather clock stops ticking. The resulting sound is warm yet not without tension. As an admirer of Herrmann and of THE TWLIGHT ZONE, I am extremely thankful to have such fine performances of these wonderful scores on CD, and in pristine, modern sound.

As a lifelong admirer of both Rod Serling and Bernard Herrmann, this two CD set is manna from heaven! Yes, there have been collections in the past of some Twilight Zone scores (all of them very uneven in terms of musical value and recording quality) but let's face it: the musical star of the show was Herrmann, and so a two CD set of Herrmann and nothing but Herrmann, created with contemporary recording techniques, was long overdue!

Joel McNeely has done a masterful job of recreating the sound and feel of the original television scores, with the added benefit of modern recording quality. My hat's off to him!

Bernard Herrmann was the greatest filmscore composer to walk the earth, and this recording of his work for the small screen proves that his stature was not limited to his big screen efforts.

As a collector of film music for over 30 years, I consider this set among the top recordings in my collection. No self-respecting fan of Herrmann, Serling, or great film music can pass this by!

I'm surprised no one has brought up the pacing - or lack thereof - on this release.

The shorter durations and commercial interruptions associated with TV shows lead to shorter scenes, and consequently shorter segments of music.

As presented here, each of these cues - some of which are only seconds in length - are presented with their final notes slowly decaying into inaudible nothingness before the next cue begins. While that may be effective for the final note of a movement of symphony, it breaks up the pacing with a presentation of short TV cues. Some of these cues are simply quick flourishes, and the final notes' decay lasts twice as long as the music that preceded them.

Had these been arranged in suites, with crossfades between cues, they would present a much more satisfying listening experience. As they are, they have no sense of motion, forward movement or development. (Loading them into iTunes with the crossfade feature liberally applied is the only way I can hear these).

Beyond that, the music is Bernard Herrmann, and it is for the most part well-played. Nice to hear them in stereo.

As Herrmann's versions of "Where is Everybody," "Walking Distance" and "The Lonely" are already available, the main reasons to buy this are "Eye of the Beholder" and "Little Girl Lost." The final two scores are not his best.

I'm thankful that McNeely and Varese did this project, and I certainly hope they'll do future TZ discs. As of this time, the scores for "Ninety Years without Slumbering", "Living Doll", and "Eye" are only available on this discing. The musicians certainly earned their paychecks...every single one of them, especially the harpists. Very surprising (according to the liner notes) that "Walking Distance" was only scored for 19 musicians. Die-hard fans of TZ like me drool over this stuff...

This isn't to say the entire recording is without objection. The tempi are often far too slow, and many times McNeely seems to hold up and emphasize entire phrases. The original recordings, with Sir Bernard conducting were swifter, in the same spirit of the fast-paced action in the episodes. "Where is Everybody" is an example of this....unfortunately, this recording is simply too methodical.

It is easily realized that McNeely was aiming for a more lyrical, less "televisional" approach with this disc...sometimes the approach works, sometimes it doesn't. While overall the recording of "Living Doll" is good, a number of passages (such as the opening bass clarinet solo) have all the urgency of a marble making its way through cement. Despite the dreary tempos, the cynicism of Herrmann's score is very nicely executed (especially what the program notes call the 'macabre waltz' in 3/8 time), in the same spirit as the horrifying turn of events in the television episode where Telly Savalas is killed in cold blood by the sadistic doll named Talky Tina.

High points of the disc are the rerecordings of "Little Girl Lost" and "Ninety Years", and to large extent "Eye of the Beholder". Very nice work indeed.

This CD could have been titled "Joel McNeely Conducts Bernard Herrmann's Twilight Zone Scores." I am not complaining when I say that, mind you! McNeely brings a wonderful sensibility to his Herrmann recordings (Vertigo is a good example), and that quality moves to the forefront here. On this CD, he conducts Herrmann's beautifully mysterious television scores much more slowly and deliberately than the conductor did himself. McNeely is attentive to each nuance of the score; he approaches every new chord as if he were saying to us, "okay, now listen to this one!" With any other film composer, this approach to a television score would seem outrageously bombastic or perhaps even boringly pedantic. Yet somehow, with Herrmann's music, it works! I think this is because Herrmann's scoring is so rich with orchestral color that we really do benefit by having each new chord emphasized and given full weight. Herrmann had an amazing ability to create moods with unusual or dissonant chord structures and progressions, and McNeely captures that fully here.

The new recordings of "Where is Everybody?" and "Walking Distance" are the best on the album. McNeely brings out chilling but ethereal violin harmonies in "Where is Everybody" that will be familiar to people who have listened to Herrmann's score for Psycho. I was disappointed in "The Lonely", however; it is a very beautiful score and somehow that just didn't come through in this recording. This may be the only instance where a slow and deliberate style of conducting loses something on the album. Overall, this is an excellent collection and Varese Sarabande and McNeely deserve congratulations for pulling it together.

Joel McNeely and Varese Sarabande have done a masterful job of recreating the sound and feel of the original "Twilight Zone" television scores. Bernard Herrmann was probably one of, if not the greatest film score composers ever. Even with this album we can see that Herrmann was a man with no limitations to any subject matter for scoring. McNeely has remained true to the score, and brought back the memories of this now "Cult Series".

The entire two CD package is worth it's weight in gold, platinum or whatever riches there are, this is beyond belief and was well worth the wait of some 30 years. Anyone would be proud to add this compact disc of - Rod Serling, Bernard Herrmann and Joel McNeely score/soundtracks to their collection. Do not let this one slip through your fingers - and then maybe, just maybe you too can enter - "The Twilight Zone"!

Total Time: 63:17 on 52 Tracks(Disc One)43:17 on 41 Tracks(Disc Two)-Varese Sarabande 302 066 087 2 (1999)

In other words, all those twilight moods that Herrmann was so wonderful at evoking.

And Mr. McNeely and his fine orchestra give every mysterious, melancholic bar the loving care and attention they deserve.

These cues and themes were composed during Herrmann's finest period, and like Psycho they share that strange, hypnotic quality of an ethereal and slightly unsettling chamber music.

So, in keeping with that ambiance and hall sound, splendidly recorded. The selections on Disk 2 alone are worth the cost of the set