North By Northwest: Original Motion Picture Score (1979 Performance)

London Studio Symphony Orchestra, Laurie Johnson, Bernard Herrmann, North By Northwest (Related Recordings) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 1, 1991)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Varèse Sarabande
• ASIN: B00000153I
• Also Available in: Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #417,076 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Main Title

2. Abducting George Kaplan

3. The Elevator

4. Murder at the U.N.

5. Romance on the Train

6. Crash of the Cropduster

7. The Auction & The Airport

8. Duo (Love Theme Reprise)

9. Cafeteria Shooting

10. Stalking Vandamm's House

11. The Match Book

12. Mt. Rushmore/Finale

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superior sounding but lacks some of the tracks of other CD, November 26, 1999

By 

WTDK "If at first the idea is not absurd, the... (My Little Blue Window, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: North By Northwest: Original Motion Picture Score (1979 Performance) (Audio CD)

Herrmann friend Laurie Johnson ( a well respected composer of film and televison music himself, Johnson wrote the score for The Avengers) does an outstanding job with Herrmann's original film score. THe recording is superior (one of the earliest digital recordings for a soundtrack) to the original cues for the film (also available), but lacks some of the idiosyncratic and intense conducting touches of Herrmann himself.

Still, if one prefers the better sounding re-recording to the analog original, this is a good place to start.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Herrmann was the master craftsman of film music", November 12, 2000

By 

J. Lovins "Mr. Jim" (Missouri-USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: North By Northwest: Original Motion Picture Score (1979 Performance) (Audio CD)

Cary Grant and Eva Maria Saint dangle from the faces of Mount Rushmore and a plane chases Grant through farm fields, plenty of plot twists are mixed with tongue-in-cheek humor...what do you have? Plus one of the greatest directors ever to sit behind the camera with one thing in mind, to keep you guessing as the suspense builds, there's only one Alfred Hitchcock for "North By Northwest" (1959)...and there's only one composer who could pull it off, Bernard Herrmann.

Herrmann composes the "MAIN TITLE" as a "kaleidoscopic orchestral fandango (spanish dance of South America) designed to get the audience ready for what is in store as the plot thickens. Musically unrelated with other themes of the score is the "ROMANCE ON THE TRAIN", beautifully haunting as we first hear in dialogue between oboe and clarient, then taken up by the strings, wonderful harmonic passages prevail.

Miklos Rozsa spoke once of Herrmann's "unblending principles", and nowhere were these more in evidence than in his wholehearted devotion to the cinema. From 1955 to 1964 the Herrmann/Hitchcock teaming yielded one masterpiece after another, during the elaborately-choreographed pursuit and fight to the death on Mount Rushmore - a musical cue Herrmann wittily dubbed "On The Rock"!

Total Time: 36:52 on 12 Tracks...Varese Sarabande VSD-47205...(1980)

5.0 out of 5 stars North By Northwest Movie Soundtrack, August 5, 2010

By 

Manic Obsession Music (ANAHEIM, CA. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: North By Northwest Original Motion Picture Score (Vinyl)

Music By Bernard Herrmann - Songs Include : Main Title (03:11) / Abducting George Kaplan (01:56) / The Elevator (01:23) / Murder At The U.N. (03:14) / Romance On The Train (04:21) / Crash Of The Cropduster (02:04) / The Auction And The Airport (02:08) / Duo (01:26) Love Theme Reprise / Cafeteria Shooting (02:11) / Stalking Vandamm's House (04:21) / The Match Book (01:48) / Mount Rushmore / Finale (08:31)