Hopefully this will be the first disc in an extended Herrmann project–even if the results aren’t quite perfect, they’re still very fine. Citizen Kane has been recorded several times, of course, most notably by Joel McNeely and the Scottish National Orchestra (O/P), but this edition gives us basically all of the same music (it runs for nearly fifty minutes), very well played, and in excellent sound. In the fake aria, Orla Boylan is no match for Kiri Te Kanawa on Charles Gerhardt’s sumptuous Herrmann collection, but otherwise there’s very little to take issue with here.
While Herrmann fans will be delighted to have an extended chunk of his music from “film noir” Hangover Square (some 18 minutes’ worth), it would be idle to pretend that the bits that he did not use to create the Concerto Macabre represent him at his best. The music is mostly dark, lugubrious, muted, and obstinately unmemorable (after the flashy opening), nor do the various brief cues string together all that convincingly for continuous listening. The Concerto, though, is definitely entertaining, and very well performed by Martin Roscoe. It will be fun to see how this series (if it is one) develops.
