Intrada returns with a new Kickstarter campaign. This will be our third,  after the successful campaigns to record Dimitri Tiomkin’s Dial M for Murder and most recently the Jerry Goldsmith scores to Black Patch and The Man. Now we turn our attention to one of the most revered composers with a singular voice – Bernard Herrmann.  Herrmann is no stranger to the Intrada catalog, as we have previously released the original tracks to North by Northwest and a late ’90s recording of Jason and the Argonauts  with the Sinfonia of London. 

As with our previous Kickstarter albums, William Stromberg is on tap to record the score along with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. 

The relationship between Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann represents one of the most famous composer/director relationships in film music history. With nine collaborations (including their amazing work on Psycho, Vertigo, and our previously released North by Northwest), nearly everything of the Herrmann/Hitchcock collaboration has been released. The two exceptions are The Birds (for which there’s no original score as Herrmann only served as sound consultant) and The Man Who Knew Too Much. With the exception of the “Main Title” recorded for a compilation and the “Storm Cloud Cantata,” which is not a Herrmann composition, the score remains essentially unreleased. Perhaps it’s because it only runs 25 minutes and is mixed low in the film so as not to have a large presence. Nonetheless it needs to be recorded,  and so here we are. This however is a stretch goal to our main campaign. See below after the clip from The Man Who Knew Too Much for our feature attraction.

Listen to Esa-Pekka Salonen’s recording of “Prelude” from The Man Who Knew Too Much. 

 Due to its brevity, we decided to pair the score with music for the 1951 film-noir classic On Dangerous Ground, perhaps one of Herrmann’s most exciting scores, Conductor Charles Gerhardt chose “The Death Hunt” from the  score to open his Bernard Herrmann compilation back in the 70s, giving the album an exciting, heart racing overture. The Film Score Monthly label later released the original tracks from mono, aged acetates, which while of historical significance didn’t make for the most pleasant listening experience. It’s a score that deserves to shine in a new contemporary recording, to allow all the thundering action and passionate playing of the solo viola d’amore to come through.

Listen to Charles Gerhardt’s recording of “Death Hunt” from On Dangerous Ground. 

For this campaign, we are setting the target just to cover the costs of recording On Dangerous Ground.  However, if we’re able to raise an additional $10,000, for a total of $60,000, then we will be able to include the Hitchcock. That’s our plan. And with your generous support, we can make that plan a reality. Check out the reward tiers and note that there are some cool add-ons you can only see by clicking on the tier itself! 

To catch a glimpse into the creative process, watch conduct William Stromberg and producer Douglass Fake collaborate on the score before recording Dial M For Murder.