Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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)

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)

By far this this CD version is the best one. Even though it's not the Original score from the film, Laurie Johnson's approach to Bernard Herrmann's score is Top Notch! If You can get a hold of the original pressing of this CD, I highly recommend it. Varèse originally had this CD pressed in Japan by JVC like so many of their first quality releases. This pressing is quit difficult to find, especially with the white fold-out insert. I was VERY fortunate to have found a MINT copy right here from a seller on Amazon!

Happy Collecting.

This early digital recording of Bernard Herrmann's NORTH BY NORTHWEST remains one of the best. Conductor Laurie Johnson delivered a very remarkable and heartfelt recording of this groundbreaking classic score. MURDER AT THE U.N. and THE AUCTION & THE AIRPORT deliver quintessential musical cues from this film. These are so memorable for anyone who has ever seen this film and loved it that you will savor these cuts. The real tour de force is MT. RUSHMORE/FINALE. The music and performance on this cut is extremely powerful and dynamic. It is truly exhilarating and moving and is Herrmann at his best in this genre or any genre for that matter. This is a very good recording and is absolutely essential if you like Bernard Herrmann's music as I do.