Herrmann: Music from Great Film Classics. Bernard Herrmann conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Mobile Fidelity Ultradisc II UDCD 701.

Herrmann: Music from Great Film Classics. Bernard Herrmann conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Mobile Fidelity Ultradisc II UDCD 701.

Korngold, Steiner, Waxman, Tiomkin, and Rozsa are names commonly associated with classic film music. But Herrmann's scores may have been the most influential of all, certainly the most cerebral. The excerpts on this 1971 gold-remastered disc illustrate the point. The album starts off with some lushly Romantic-gothic music from the 1944 version of Jane Eyre. It is at first hauntingly lyrical and then builds appropriately in mystery and intensity to its riveting climax; it well captures the atmosphere of Charlotte Bronte's early 19th century but never lapses into melodrama. Next come two selections of memorable tunes from the less-than-memorable 1952 film, The Snows of Kilimanjaro. My advice: listen to the music while sticking to the Hemingway short story. Following that is the showpiece of the set, Citizen Kane, which is really a collection of tunes from two Orson Welles films, Katie and The Magnificent Ambersons. Herrmann refers to the piece as a divertissement he originally called "Welles Raises Kane." In Citizen Kane everything worked, and no little credit must be given the music. Finally, the disc ends with two numbers from The Devil and Daniel Webster, the marvelous 1941 film based on Stephen Vincent Benet's short story and stage play. The film, incidentally, was released variously under the titles Daniel and the Devil and All That Money Can Buy. Figure Hollywood.

Mo-Fi's remastering of the original London Phase 4 sound is just as successful as their treatment of Herrmann's previously released discs, The Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann, etc. Missing, however, from the Phase 4 soundstage is much depth or deep bass, but the rest of the sonics are excellent -- smooth, well imaged from left to right, well defined, and dynamically wide. It's further evidence of how successfully Mobile Fidelity, can handle straightforward, classical orchestral music when they have a mind to.