Though he collaborated with many directors, Herrmann will always be most associated with Alfred Hitchcock. Though he also wrote many unforgettable extended sequences of film music, his sensitive, less-is-more approach and respect for dialogue, sound effects and the power of silence would make him an ideal collaborator for the master of suspense: Alfred Hitchcock. Perhaps one of the most influential aspects of his approach to film scoring was his use of short cues used for transitions between scenes in radio, cues lasting only a few seconds were often necessary to create the illusion of movement in space or time between the scenes of a radio play, and Herrmann adapted this technique to cinema to great effect. Herrmann took much of his experience from radio with him to the movies. Herrmann is standing behind him in the center of the photograph leading the CBS Orchestra. Orson Welles (hands in the air) leads The Mercury Theatre on the Air in 1938. The following year he won an Oscar for his score to the Devil and Daniel Webster, and from then on Herrmann became one of Hollywood’s leading film composers. After many successes (including the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast), Welles decided that he wanted to work with Herrmann on his 1940 masterpiece, Citizen Kane. In 1934, he began working for CBS by providing music for radio programs, and it was through this work that he began to collaborate with a young Orson Welles. He soon got to know Aaron Copland, the Gershwins and other musical luminaries in New York. He soon began composing original compositions, and after stints at NYU and Juilliard, he founded his own orchestra dedicated to performing new and neglected music. Together with a friend, he would sometimes sneak into rehearsals at Carnegie Hall through a door with a broken lock and would surreptitiously listen to conductors like Mengelberg, Toscanini and Stokowski at work. The son of Russian Jewish emigrants living in New York, Bernard Herrmann was drawn to music early in his childhood. Learn more about innovative film composer Bernard Herrmann and his haunting Suite from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which opens the program. On October 26, 27 and 28, acclaimed guest conductor Fabien Gabel leads Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, a program of musical storytelling featuring works by Tchaikovsky, Korngold and Bernard Herrmann. Above: Image adapted from artwork by Saul Bass for the theatrical release poster of Vertigo.
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