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Psycho

The Music of Bernard Herrmann

Sunday 28 February | 2:30pmUtzon Room, Sydney Opera House

Master Series

Media Partner (Virtuoso Series)Venue Partner

City Rectial Hall

PsychoThe Music of

Bernard Herrmann

Sunday 28th February, 2:30pmThe Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House

Bernard Herrmann

Echoes for String Quartet(28 mins)

Bernard Herrmann

Psycho Suite for Strings(28 mins)

- interval (20 mins) -

Bernard Herrmann

Clarinet Quintet “Souvenirs de Voyage”

(30 mins)

Nicole Brady

Postlude(8 mins)

This afternoon’s performance will be recorded by Fine Music FM (102.5) For future broadcast. Recording Engineer, Greg Simmons

Psycho: The Music of Bernard Herrmann - Sunday 28 February

Echoes for String Quartet is tinged with a certain mel-ancholy, an indication of the composer’s state of mind during its composition. After 15 years, Bernard Herrmann’s second marriage had painfully collapsed, and his once-solid career creating music for films was looking increasingly shaky. Perhaps it was indeed this con-fluence of events that prompted Herrmann – after well over a decade writing music exclusive-ly for the cinema – to turn once again to the concert hall.

The composer himself de-scribed this work as “a series of nostalgic emotional remem-brances” and while it contains much that is likely personal, the work also alludes to many of Herrmann’s most memorable musical achievements.

The plucked strings near the work’s opening, for example, reference Psycho – the Hitch-cock film Herrmann scored at the pinnacle of his career; elsewhere there are hints of the memory waltz from Snows

of Kilimanjaro; while the violin harmonics that surface at the quartet’s close evoke Vertigo’s tragic heroine.

In Herrmann’s mind, exploiting film music for use in the con-cert hall would not have been a source of tension. He considered all music should be assessed solely on its merits – a view at odds with others in the musical establishment who believed film music to be inherently inferior. In fact when pushed, the composer declared that ‘a film score will live longer that any other kind of music’.

Herrmann’s commitment to the artistic integrity of his film music was, in part, responsible for the decline in demand for his services at the time Echoes was created. Ultimately, it also contributed to his falling out with Alfred Hitchcock – the film director and long-time collab-orator with whom Herrmann had produced many landmark scores. While Hitchcock was willing to acquiesce to industry pressure for film scores that

Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975)

Echoes for String Quartet(1965)

Perf

orm

ers

Cat

alin

Ung

urea

nu (v

iolin

), Ai

rena

Nak

amur

a (v

iolin

), N

eil

Thom

pson

(vio

la),

Teije

Hyl

kem

a (c

ello

)

Omega Ensemble Master Series

would result in a hit song – or at the very least, would be com-mercially exploitable – Herr-mann refused to alter his style accordingly. When Hitchcock finally pulled rank, Herrmann

resented the interference, and the relationship came to an abrupt conclusion.

Notes by Rhiannon Cook

Bern

ard

Her

rman

n w

ith d

irect

or A

lfred

Hitc

ock

1956


Hitchcock’s intrusion into what Bernard Herrmann saw as his artistic domain ultimately brought their relationship to a close; but earlier in what was a spectacularly fruitful collabo-ration, his willingness to defer to the composer’s judgment played a pivotal role in shaping one of the most effective horror films of all time.

The movie’s most unforget-table scene is, without doubt, the iconic shower scene, in which the heroine is brutally murdered. Hitchcock originally envisaged this scene without music, but Herrmann disagreed and disregarding Hitchcock’s directions, went ahead to com-pose a cue. After hearing what Herrmann had created, Hitch-cock needed no convincing, dismissing his earlier directive as an ‘improper suggestion’.

Psycho the movie achieved immediate popularity on its re-lease, and somewhat unusually, Hitchcock generously acknowl-edged Herrmann’s contribution, frequently asserting that ‘thirty

three and a third of Psycho’s success was due to the music’. Indeed Psycho’s music has made a lasting impression, influencing generations of composers writing for both the stage and the screen.

This suite is an arrangement of the film score commissioned by the Tippett Quartet. In keeping with the original music – and unusually for a soundtrack at the time – it is scored only for strings, a monochromatic pallet that compliment’s the film’s black and white cinema-tography. The music not only provides a striking example of Herrmann’s ability to har-ness music’s emotional power, but also displays his assured creativity. Written well over a decade before minimalism became fashionable, Herrmann weaves from a single musical thread – first heard in the film’s opening credits – an enthralling musical landscape.

Notes by Rhiannon Cook


Psycho - A Suite for Strings(1965)

Perf

orm

ers

Cat

alin

Ung

urea

nu (v

iolin

), Ai

rena

Nak

amur

a (v

iolin

), N

eil

Thom

pson

(vio

la),

Teije

Hyl

kem

a (c

ello

)

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Written two years after Echoes, Souvenir de Voyage is similar to its predecessor in style, but is more optimistic in outlook. He had met his soon-to-be third wife, Norma, and following his break with Hitchcock, had forged new relationships with a number of French and English film directors.

And although this Quintet was written for the concert hall, Herrmann’s proficiency as a film composer is again very much in evidence as he draws from various art forms to create this alluring clarinet quintet.

The first movement takes as its inspiration A.E. Housman’s poem ‘On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble’, while the second evokes Ireland’s Aran Islands and the final pays trib-ute to Turner’s Venetian water-colours. The musical scenery Herrmann builds around each of these stimuli attest to his profound understanding of the intimate interplay between sound and sight.

Notes by the Rhiannon Cook


Clarinet Quintet “Souvenirs de Voyage”(1967)

Perf

orm

ers

Dav

id R

owde

n (c

larin

et),

Cat

alin

Ung

urea

nu (v

iolin

), Ai

rena

Nak

amur

a (v

iolin

), N

eil T

hom

pson

(vio

la),

Teije

Hyl

kem

a (c

ello

)

Excerpt from Souvenirs de Voyage


Postlude is an homage to Ber-nard Hermmann, and Alfred Hitchcock. The work naturally has a nostalgic, yet post-mod-ern feeling to it. My goal in writing this work, was to create a feeling of anxiety, melancholy, and fear. I sought to intensify this feeling through the use of field recording, which I person-ally recorded in various parts of Sydney on my trusty Sony

Nicole BradyPostlude

PCM 100. The dialogue seeks to heighten the interplay of the opposing temporalities between the amplified clarinet quintet, the audience, and the time in which the text was written. As Alfred Hitchcock said, “I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s somebody nobody knows about”.

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2

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Performers

David Row

den (clarinet / bass clarinet), Catalin U

ngureanu (violin), Airena Nakam

ura (violin), Neil

Thompson (viola), Teije H

ylkema (cello), Kendall G

oddard (actor), Ben Carey (creative technologist)


ArtistsDavid RowdenClarinet / Founder & Artistic DirectorDavid was awarded a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music, where he won the Geoffrey Hawkes Prize for clarinet perfor-mance in 2004. Whilst overseas, David studied in Italy with Anthony Pay at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana Siena, in France at the Academie de Villecroze with French clarinetist Paul Meyer, and also the Pacific Music Festival in Japan.

Since returning to Sydney, David has performed as a freelance or-chestral musician with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, The Queensland Orchestra, New Zea-land Symphony Orchestra and as Guest Principal clarinet with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.

As a chamber musician, since 2005 David has performed as a Guest Artist with the Australia Ensemble and Sydney Soloists. In 2005 David founded the Omega Ensemble. The Ensemble has col-

laborated with many International and Australian artists includ-ing Emma Matthews (soprano), Paul Meyer (conductor/clarinet), Dimitri Ashkenazy (clarinet) and Timo-Veikko Valve (cello) to name a few.

In 2011 David was a finalist in the ABC Young Performer of the year awards performing the Copland Clarinet Concerto with the Ade-laide Symphony Orchestra.

Since 2013 David has curated the House Music series at Government House, Sydney. David is a Buf-fet-Crampon artist and current-ly performs on the new Divine clarinets. David has overseen the growth of the Omega Ensemble over the last ten years from early performances in church halls and private homes to Ensemble in Residence at the City Recital Hall Angel Place.

Catalin Ungureanu ViolinA graduate of the George Enescu Conservatory, Romania, Catalin also studied in Germany and has


toured Europe extensively with the Moldova Philharmonic Orchestra. Catalin was also 2nd prize winner in the Golden Lyra Award, Roma-nia and in Usti nad Orlici, Czecho-slovakia and was awarded the Special Prize for his performance in Subiaco, Italy. He has been a member of La Camerata Cham-ber Orchestra and since 2003, a full-time member of the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra.

Airena Nakamura ViolinAirena was born in Japan and moved to Sydney where she began her violin studies with her father Yasuki Nakamura. After completing her Bachelor of Music Performance degree from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with First Class Honours, Airena continued her studies in Germany and USA and has been the re-cipient of numerous awards and grants. Airena has toured exten-sively with the Australian Cham-ber Orchestra and played with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Since 2005, Airena has been with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra where she currently holds the position of Principal Second Violin.

Neil Thompson ViolaHaving begun on viola in his hometown Whyalla, Neil’s career has taken him all around the world, including to Europe as solo-ist. Neil has performed and toured with the Adelaide, Melbourne, Tasmanian and Sydney Symphony Orchestras (upon holding an SSO fellowship in 2012), as well as with the Australian Chamber Orches-tra and its sister orchestra ACO2 with whom he was an ‘Emerging Artist’. He enjoyed two years of touring with ‘The Cat Empire’ and features as soloist and guest artist on their DVD ‘Live at the Bowl’. Neil regularly performs at the Sydney Opera House with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra.

Primarily involved in playing chamber-music, he has been for-tunate enough to have performed alongside Pekka Kuusisto, Kristian Winther, Richard Tognetti, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Vladimir Ashkena-zy, Simone Young, Brett Dean, Lisa Moore and more recently, the Omega Ensemble, as well as others. 2015 proved to be a particularly exciting year for him having been invited to join the highly acclaimed aformentioned ‘Omega Ensemble’ as well as co-founding ‘The Nano Symphony’ with his wife, clarinettist Catherine Thompson.


With previous conducting mentors including Richard Gill and Keith Crellin, Neil is currently conductor/director of Killara High’s orches-tras and has directed perfor-mances of Schubert’s ‘Great’ 9th Symphony (in Adelaide) and Faure’s Requiem with the Mosman Symphony Orchestra, Sydney.

Teije Hylkema CelloTeije Hylkema is the Principal Cellist of the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra. He moved to Australia in 2012 and has worked as a guest principal with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. He also performed in close collaborations with violinist Andrew Haveron, accordionist James Crabb, didgeridoo player William Barton and with major art Companies such as Opera Queensland, Opera Victoria, Aus-tralian Chamber Orchestra and Dance North.

Before moving to Australia, Teije was co-principal at the Radio Kamer Filharmonie, a Dutch or-chestra that specialized in ba-roque and modern repertoire with chief conductors Jaap van Zweden and the late Frans Brüggen.

Teije is a dedicated chamber music player, both on modern and

baroque cello. He has performed in many chamber music festivals in Europe and in Australia, he was a guest artist at the Tyalgum Mu-sic festival, The Sydney Chamber Music Festival and the “Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields” festival.

Nicole Brady ComposerNicole Brady’s work as a compos-er includes commissions by the National Gallery of Art & National Symphony US (Score to silent film ‘Le Pied du Mouton” for the open-ing of the Joan Miro exhibition), Savassi Jazz Festival Sao Paolo (Orchestration of the four move-ment ’Spaces’ Piano Concerto by Kenny Werner), Omega Ensemble (‘Valse in ‘Listesso Tempo’), per-formances at Le Poisson Rouge, Reduta Olomouc (Moravian Phil-harmonic), Haydn Saal (Orchestra of Vienna), New York Music with a View Festival, Austrian Contempo-rary Music Society, Provincetown Theatre New York, Sydney Opera House, etc. Her music for Feature Film has been shown in compe-tition at A list festivals including Tribecca, Cannes, Shanghai, and her work in Video Games includes Audio Directing Wesley Snipe’ Julius Styles The International, as well as lead orchestration work on AAA games series Tekken, Valkyria Chronicles, etc. Nicole is a Mas-


ters of Music graduate of New York University (Elmer Bernstein Award), and Bachelor of Music (performance) graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (Winifred Nerious Award).

Kendall Goddard ActorKendall has worked as an ac-tor, singer, songwriter, dancer, circus artist and voiceover artist in Australia, USA, Canada and Europe. She is currently featured on ABC as various characters in The Wiggles Series 8, on Nickel-odeon Junior as Genevieve, the French Maid, in The Kingdom of Paramithi and on the Discovery Channel in Deadly Women. She is also featured as the narrator of the third series of Dorothy the Dinosaur on ABC. Her film credits include: Let’s Eat (Wiggly Pro-ductions), Ukulele Baby! (Wiggly Productions) and Tales of the Fourth Dimension (Ghost Films). Her theatre credits include: in Brisbane, Cameron Mackintosh’s Les Misérables; in Sydney, The Odd Couple, Live Acts On Stage, And Then There Were None, Wolf Lullaby; in London, Blood Wed-ding, Poet No. 7, Sex Diary Of An Infidel, These People; in Paris, Les Misérables; UK tour, Le Petit Prince; European Tour, Huis Clos. US/Canada Tour, Wiggly Circus.

Kendall is bilingual English-French and is based in Sydney and Van-couver.

Ben Carey Creative TechnologistBen Carey is a Sydney-based saxophonist/composer/technolo-gist with interests in contemporary classical, improvised, interactive and electro-acoustic music. After completing a Bachelor of Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2005, Ben moved to France to study saxophone and contemporary music under Marie-Bernadette Charrier at the Conservatoire de Bordeaux. Back in Australia, Ben is currently undertaking a PhD at the Univer-sity of Technology, Sydney focused upon the design and development of interactive musical systems for improvised performance with instrumental musicians. Ben has performed and exhibited work in Australia, New Zealand, France, Austria, the United States and Switzerland.


By the time of his premature death in December 1975, Bernard Herr-mann was a well-known figure on the London musical scene, both as a composer with a formidable list of major works to his name, and as a conductor, the role in which he first made his mark, and in which he gave the most tangi-ble proof of his great interest in British music. He was born in 1911 in New York, and studied compo-sition with Bernard Wagenaar of the Juilliard School. At New York University his teachers included Philip James and Percy Grainger whose enquiring and enterprising attitude made a great impression on the young student composer. In 1931 he founded the New Chamber Orchestra of New York, which he conducted until he was appointed staff conductor of the Colum-bia Broadcasting System three years later. He became conduc-tor-in-chief of the CBS Symphony Orchestra in 1940, a post he held for fifteen years, and appeared regularly with many American orchestras. It was during this period that he attracted attention through the very large number of

British compositions he introduced to the American public. His com-positions of the 1930s and 1940s made a great impact and earned him something of a reputation for being the enfant terrible of Ameri-can music. Although perhaps best known for his film scores, par-ticularly through his association with Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Wells, he also wrote a number of important concert, operatic and chamber works. Wuthering Heights (1950), an opera in four acts, was first performed in 1982 in the States by Portland Opera, and the choral cantata for male voices Moby Dick (1938) received its premiere with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli. A Portrait of Hitch (1968), a short orchestral piece dedicated to Alfred Hitchcock, is based on music written for the film The Trouble with Harry. Active to the end despite poor health, at the time of his death Herrmann was writing a new film score and making plans for several gramo-phone recordings.


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Psycho - static1.squarespace.comstatic1.squarespace.com/.../Omega-Program-Psycho.pdf · Psycho: The...

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