DVOŘÁK’S PROPHECY – A New Narrative for American Classical Music

Film 5: Beyond Psycho – The Musical Genius of Bernard Herrmann

A PostClassical Ensemble ‘More than Music’ film
Written and produced by Joseph Horowitz
Visual presentation by Peter Bogdanoff

Hollywood’s supreme film composer was a casualty of the standard narrative – as he himself was bitterly aware. Not only were his movie scores high creative accomplishments; Bernard Herrmann was a formidable – and formidably unfashionable – concert composer whose Clarinet Quintet may be the most beautiful chamber music by an American. His Psycho Narrative, which we also sample, surpasses the PsychoSuite we normally hear. He honed his gift for dramatising the spoken word as the pre-eminent composer for a genre no longer remembered: the radio drama. We sample Whitman (1944) – a Norman Corwin radio play that deserves to live as a concert work. It also exemplifies how radio, an unprecedented mass medium, once consolidated the American experience, its biggest star being Franklin D. Roosevelt. Our participants include the Whitman scholar Karen Karbiener, the critic Alex Ross, Murray Horwitz on radio lore, and William Sharp on playing Walt Whitman to music by Bernard Herrmann. – J.H.

Music:
Bernard Herrmann

with
William Sharp
PostClassical Ensemble
Angel Gil-Ordóñez
Joseph Horowitz
Murray Horwitz
David Jones
Karen Karbiener
Alex Ross

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Audio language: English
Running time: 61 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)