62700 - Available on CD, Super Audio CD

As a part of their ongoing exploration of 20th-century orchestral music, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra have made their first recording of music from the golden age of American film -- the classic film scores of Bernard Herrmann, including excerpts from his memorable scores for the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock as well François Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

Salonen and the LAPO are renowned for their advocacy of the 20th century repertoire, from Rachmaninov to Ligeti, and this recording is a further indication of the breadth and depth of that repertoire. Herrmann was a classically trained composer and conductor (a close friend of Charles Ives) whose work had a transforming effect on film music after he came to Hollywood in 1941 to score Citizen Kane for Orson Welles.

He was influenced more by the impressionism and stark drama in the music of Debussy and Sibelius than by the operatic intensity of German or Russian Romanticism, which set the tone for American film music in the 1930s. Herrmann wrote moody, idiosyncratic music, often using small and unusual combinations of instruments, that complemented the bold style of directors such as Welles and Hitchcock. The score for Hitchcock's Psycho is a famous example of the close collaboration between director and composer: Herrmann consciously wrote what he called "black & white music," using only a string orchestra, to reflect the visual tone and eerie momentum of the film.

An extended suite from Psycho is featured in the Salonen/LAPO recording, along with suites from Herrmann's scores for Marnie, Vertigo, Fahrenheit 451 and Taxi Driver; the Prelude to The Man Who Knew Too Much and the Overture to North by Northwest. A special feature of this recording is a rare performance of excerpts from Herrmann's score for the 1966 Hitchcock thriller Torn Curtain. Bowing to studio pressure, Hitchcock fired the composer in the midst of recording the score (replacing him with John Addison) because Herrmann's music was deemed too dark and lacking in commercial appeal to audiences of the day.

Herrmann's score for Vertigo has been rediscovered by film audiences with the October 6 release by Universal Pictures of the restored version of Hitchcock's classic, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak.

Herrmann's life and career are covered in the documentary Bernard Herrmann that is a part of Sony Classical's video series Music for the Movies, available singly on videocassette or laserdisc (SHV/SLV 67169).