Beyond Vertigo – Chamber Music by Film Composers
Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975)
Souvenir de Voyage for Clarinet Quintet (1967)
Nino Rota (1911-1979)
Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano (1973)
John Corigliano (b. 1938)
Soliloquy for Clarinet and String Quartet (1995)
Tigran Mansurian (b.1939)
Agnus Dei, “In memoriam Oleg Kagan” (2006)
Frédéric Devreese (1929-2020)
Valse Sacrée
Ennio Morricone (1928-2020)
Metamorfosi di Violetta (1952 rev. 2001)
Roeland Hendrikx (clarinet), Nicolas Dupont (violin), Noémi Tiercet (violin), Sander Geerts (viola), Sébastien Walnier (cello), Liebrecht Vanbeckevoort (piano)
rec.June 2025, Kleine Zaal of Muziekgebouw Frits Philips, Eindhoven, The Netherlands; November 2025 MotorMusic Studios, Mecheelen, Belgium (Mansurian)
antarctica records AR081 [76]
The premise of a collection of absolute music by composers better known for their cinematic work is not a new one. Back in the early 1990s, the Bay Cities label released a series of three discs under the collective title “Classical Hollywood” which was a truly fascinating and valuable survey of works by the likes of Korngold, Waxman, Jerome Moross, David Shire, Colin Towns, Ernest Gold and Bernard Herrmann. This new collection from antarctica records follows that concept, although here the focus is on works that include clarinet. The group is the Roeland Hendrikx Ensemble – Hendrikx was the principal clarinettist of National Orchestra of Belgium until 2017 when he embarked on a solo career. The Ensemble is essentially a piano quintet plus clarinet and the music they perform is for a flexible line-up drawn from the group of six players. Before considering the music, it is well-worth saying that all the pieces are quite beautifully played, both technically and musically, and recorded with natural warmth and sophistication. By this measure, the new release trumps the Bay Cities discs which are also very good but not perhaps always from the topmost drawer.
The disc’s title “Beyond Vertigo” neatly brings together the single largest work – the Souvenir de Voyage for clarinet quintet by Bernard Herrmann, and the wish by composers such as Herrmann not to be judged by their film work alone. However, the liner note suggests that for a composer such as Herrmann, even as he strove to dissociate himself with the illustrative and cinematic, somehow found his finest work to be rooted in the narrative. I am not sure I quite agree with the liner note writer’s argument. It was not that Herrmann (and other film composers) wished to avoid narratives, rather that they did not want their narratives to be dictated by or constrained to the whim of the film director. Herrmann moved to Britain in the late 1960s to focus on writing and recording non-cinematic music and he was a confirmed Anglophile. However, I do not think his very beautiful Souvenir de Voyage is the piece that “exudes England and Englishness at every turn” that the liner suggests. Yes, it is melancholy and nostalgic but surely the clearest, most striking musical influence is the Brahms Clarinet Quintet refracted through a 20th century harmonic lens. There are literary influences: Housman in the opening movement and Synge for the central Berceuse – but the sound leans heavily on the Brahms. Written in three elegant movements, this work avoids the uneasy dissonances and nervous energy of many Herrmann film scores. The movement titles reflect this; Lento – molto tranquillo, Andante – Berceuse, Andante – canto amoroso.
Alongside his equally nostalgic string quartet Echoes, this is Herrmann’s most Romantic and easily attractive score. As such, it has received several fine performances (aside from the Bay Cities release mentioned above) dating back to The Ariel Quartet with Robert Hill on Unicorn from 1975, via David Schifrin on Delos to Julian Bliss with the Tippett Quartet on Signum. More recently are Michel Lethiec and the Fine Arts Quartet on Naxos – which I reviewed in 2017 here. I have not heard the Bliss performance, but of those I know, this new performance by Hendrikx and friends would go to the top of the list – very good though those others are. This is a genuinely beautiful, tender and poised rendering which captures the gentle yet passionate yearning score perfectly. For 1967, this is about as unrepentantly lyrical as it is possible to imagine which is both its strength and potential weakness. However, in a performance of such magical refinement any such criticism fades away to irrelevance.
Nino Rota’s perky Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano provides an immediate and delightful contrast. If Herrmann’s musical home was England, then in this score Rota’s is France. This is very much in the spirit of a neo-classical Jean Francaix or Ibert. Again, the playing is exemplary – ideally alert and nimble with the balance between the three disparate instruments perfectly handled by the antarctica engineers. The mood of the three movements is wonderfully contrasted with the gentle melancholy of the central Andante a perfect foil to the closing romp of an Allegrissimo which has hints of one of those manic spinning top Shostakovich silent movie scherzi. The playing is superb throughout but the expressive range of the central movement is especially impressive. This work was unknown to me before hearing this disc and it proves to be a delightful discovery.
As the liner points out John Corigliano has only written three film scores – fine ones though they are – so his inclusion as a film music composer seems slightly tenuous in the context here but given the quality of the work in question that seems a slightly churlish observation. His Soliloquy for clarinet and string quartet again provides a strong and striking contrast to the preceding score. This work was written as an ‘In Memoriam’ for Corigliano’s father who died in 1975 having famously led the New York Philharmonic for 23 years. To quote the composer; “I still find it hard to think of that orchestra without him sitting in the first chair. So the idea of an extended dialogue for clarinet and violin seemed not only natural but inevitable. The Soliloquy begins with a long, unaccompanied line for the violin. The other strings enter, and a mood of sustained lyricism introduces the clarinet. The prevailing feeling is that of desolation. I deliberately avoided an emotional climax in the Soliloquy, feeling that sustaining the same mood throughout the music would achieve a heightened intensity.” The contained emotion and quiet intensity of the work is striking and again the Roeland Hendrikx Ensemble have the absolute technical and musical measure. The opening violin line is brutally high and exposed but played here by Nicolas Dupont with ethereal beauty. Not just here, Roeland Hendrikx’s clarinet playing reminded me of the great Alfred Boskovsky of Vienna Octet fame whose meltingly pure sound I find profoundly beautiful. The combination of that tonal purity with the emotional intensity of this work is genuinely moving.
The one composer in this programme whose name I did not know at all was the Armenian Tigran Mansurian – so by extension I have no idea what contribution to film music he has made or how central that is to his output. His Wikipedia page suggests ten film scores between 1968 -1980 but lists substantially more non-cinematic work. Curiously the 2006 Agnus Dei “In memoriam Oleg Kagan” performed here is not included in the list of some 30 chamber works. There is a similar sense of contained grief tightly held. The scoring here for piano trio plus clarinet is sparse yet luminous. There is a bell-like chiming quality to the keyboard writing in particular that is reminiscent of some Arvo Pärt. This appears to be the work’s third recording but clearly I do not know the other two to compare. In isolation this sounds like another perfectly focussed, wonderfully atmospheric interpretation. The three movements take their titles from the Latin; Agnus Dei, Qui tollis peccata mundi and Miserere nobis. The mood across all three movements is reflective and emotionally inward with hints of ancient religious chant mingling within minimalist textures and motifs.
Frédéric Devreese’s Valse Sacrée is the only work offered here actually derived from a film score. There is a Palm Court swirling energy about the writing that is wholly beguiling. The covers states “violin part adaptation by R. Hendrikx” so I imagine it was originally written for piano trio. The main up-tempo section has the rhythmic complexity and sly decadence of Astor Piazzolla – this is hugely entertaining and a great encore piece, I imagine. A composer I do not associate with music away from the cinema is Ennio Morricone. His Metamorfosi di Violetta was originally written when the composer was just 24 and well before he gained fame for his film scores. The version for Clarinet Quintet performed here dates from nearly fifty years later in 2001. According to the liner Morricone deconstructs themes from Verdi’s La traviata to create a portrait of that opera’s heroine Violetta’s “mental instability and torment”. It makes for a bold conclusion to this disc as the music is fragmentary and elusive – Verdi’s themes are dissected to the point of unrecognisability. Of course, given the impact of his most famous film scores, it is easy to forget Morricone’s early years, first as a prodigiously talented student of Petrassi at the famous Saint Cecilia Conservatory in Rome then in his continuing commitment through the 1960’s up to 1980 to performing avant garde and improvised music as part of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. Again, his Wikipedia page lists a very substantial number of “classical” compositions.
As will be clear by now, I find this disc to be a very impressive and wholly enjoyable survey of mainly unfamiliar music superbly presented. Antarctica provides a generous, English-only, 32-page booklet that includes several quirky if unnecessary studio photographs of the ensemble as well as various session images. I would have traded some of them for more biographical information about all of these exceptional players. Stef Grondelaers’ notes about the music and composers itself are somewhat florid and occasionally contentious but the most important elements of repertoire, performances and engineering are above reproach. A generous playing time simply confirms the all-round value of this release.
Nick Barnard
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