The infamous collapse of the famed partnership of Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann during the first day of recording sessions for Torn Curtain has ultimately overshadowed the fact that John Addison wrote a pretty good replacement score, one finally released in full by La-La Land Records this year. If you like soaring 60s love themes or cimbalom-infused spy suspense, this one is an easy recommendation, though perhaps holding it back from a higher rating is that it never really becomes more than the sum of its parts, the score's various modes rarely interacting with each other.
I'm gonna also go a step further and say that Herrmann's score is a tad overrated. Remove the score's two most well-known pieces (the menacing Prelude and the even more menacing The Killing) and the rest - while good - doesn't quite have the impact of his Hitch classics. Still, the surviving 15 minutes of original recordings sounds astonishingly good on La-La Land's release.
One overrated, one underrated. ***1/2 for both of them, though as a piece of film music history the new album is utterly essential, and the liner notes by Jeff Bond are impressively exhaustive.
Side note: if you're going to seek out more of Herrmann's material, the best place is probably the re-recording Elmer Bernstein did for his Film Music Collection series which adds another 25 minutes of music Herrmann wrote but didn’t get the chance to record. There's a slightly longer Varèse Sarabande one but for some reason that performance has always underwhelmed me.
La-La Land original recordings - https://lalalandrecords.com/torn-curtain-expanded-remastered-limited-edition/
Bernstein rerecording - https://open.spotify.com/album/5eBfwtr7jWi1FtF2ySfcZC
VS rerecording - https://open.spotify.com/album/7kGSjJFa1npv2UmV0Ok1Pp
And Herrmann’s music finally made it into movie theaters! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAxwiPkAVns
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Prior 2024 album posts
- Live and Let Die - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=131612
- Octopussy - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=131627
- Hellboy II - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=131961
- HTTYD: The Hidden World - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=132742
- Top Gun - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=132758
- Rock-a-Doodle - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=132825
- Something Wicked This Way Comes - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=134359
- Night Passage - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=134397
- Honey, I Shrunk the Kids - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=134671
- Backdraft - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=134759
- Nightbreed - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=134774
- Scorpio - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=134915
- Star Wars: Rebels S3 & S4 - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=136026
- You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=136088
- For Love of the Game - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=136102
- Eye of the Needle - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=136116
- Dinosaur - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=136878
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