Bennie and Hitch: The Bernard Herrmann Centenary Celebration

I'm posting this evening the complete centenary program that WXQR(FM 105.9) in NYC for Bernard Herrmann.  June 29th marks the 100th anniversary of the composers in NYC in 1911.  Hitchcock fans will know that Herrmman's collaboration began with Hitchcock on The Trouble with Harry in 1955.

Steven C. Smith, Herrmann's best biographer, whose book A Heart at Fire's Center is the standard bearing work on the composer, wrote this summary biography for The Bernard Herrmann Estate site:

No composer contributed more to film than Bernard Herrmann, who in over forty scores enriched the work of such directors as Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, and Martin Scorsese. From his first film (Citizen Kane) to his last (Taxi Driver), Herrmann was a master at evoking psychological nuance and dramatic tension through music, often using unheard-of instrumental combinations to suit the dramatic needs of a film. His scores are amongst the most distinguished ever written, ranging from the fantastic (Fahrenheit 451, The Day the Earth Stood Still) to the romantic (Obsession, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir) to the terrifying (Psycho).
Film was not the only medium in which Herrmann made a powerful mark. His radio broadcasts included Orson Welle's Mercury Theatre on the Air and its most notorious presentation, The War of the Worlds. His concert music was commissioned and performed by the New York Philharmonic. As chief conductor of the CBS Symphony, Herrmann gave important first performances of music by such composers as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Charles Ives, whose work he particularly championed.
It seems fitting that a composer who blazed new trails in electronic media of the 20th century - radio, cinema and television - is finding fresh appreciation in the age of the internet - a time when Herrmann's influence on the art of dramatic music continues to grow.
Steven C. Smith

Herrmann conducting the Glendale Symphony Orchestra on Oct. 29, 1957.  While pre-production began in 1956, actress issues and Hitchcock's own health at pushed the production start date to the Fall of 1957, with the location work i n San Francisco and nearby San Juan Bautisa taking place the first few weeks of Oct. 1957.

Most people are not aware that much of of the University of California's  Bernard Herrmann collection (most of which is house at UC Santa Barbara) is availble online at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf438nb3j.

Here are the flashplayers for parts one and two of this months radio