Suites from Pyscho & North by Northwest

AMG Review of Suites from Pyscho & North by Northwest

Bruce Eder
All Music Guide

This latter-day Unicorn label release is a treat, both for the serious soundtrack buff or the neophyte collector. The highlight is the "Suite from Psycho," recorded by composer Bernard Herrmann in 1975 and still one of the finest accounts of film soundtrack music ever given a "concert" style treatment -- 29 minutes and change of pure gold. Paired with it is the "Suite from North by Northwest" conducted by Laurie Johnson, recorded in the late '70s. Herrmann himself recorded an abbreviated suite of highlights from this score for Decca Records in the late '60s, which may explain, in part, why he never got around to doing a fuller account for Unicorn -- the account here contains far more music than Herrmann's short set of excerpts, and is a good compromise between that recording and the more complete accounts of the score that have surfaced in the decades since. Johnson's conducting isn't quite as lively as one would wish, and he doesn't push the tempos of certain passages quite as hard as he might have; but the textures brought out by the state of the art sound compensate for this shortcoming, and it is an enjoyable presentation of the main body of the score. The only caveat for veteran soundtrack buffs is that they're certain to have both of these scores already well-represented in their collections, but the pairing is still a welcome and handy one.