On Dangerous Ground

On Dangerous Ground was the second release of 1951 to have a Herrmann score although the composer had started work on the picture in November of the year before. In fact, he completed the composition at a quarter to five in the afternoon on New Year's Eve. The film is a gritty crime drama that starts out in a familiarly bleak urban environment and then moves to a less familiar but equally bleak rural landscape. Bad cop Jim Wilson is transferred upstate to investigate a murder and becomes involved with the blind sister of the suspect he is pursuing. The storyline gave Herrmann the opportunity to write some blistering chase music ("The Death Hunt"), some churning string patterns ("Snowstorm") that crop up again in his later Hitchcock scores, and a tender love theme ("Blindness") written specifically for the viola d'amore.  

The recording I'm listening to is the FSM disc in the Turner Classic Movies series (FSM Vol 6 no. 18) and consists of the original score taken from acetate playback discs. The CD comes with a warning that "surface noise is inherent in the transfers, and is especially noticeable in [some] cues." They're not kidding. The one I'm listening to right now (Cue19 "The Parting/The Return/The City/Finale") is popping and hissing like an old well-worn piece of vinyl. But - to paraphrase British DJ John Peel - I rather like surface noise.

Having said that, I do prefer the Charles Gerhardt interpretation of "The Death Hunt" cue on RCA disc The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann. If there was one single piece of music that made me a Herrmann fan, it was that scorching performance, with its eight horns baying like the hounds of hell and a viciously struck steel plate that initially made me think the needle of my record player had skipped a groove. Herrmann was rightly proud of the piece (he, in fact, suggested its inclusion on the RCA disc), and it works as a rousing encore in the concert hall. You can see the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing it here.

Despite its surface noise problems - or, indeed, maybe because of them - the FSM disc is one of my favourite Herrmann recordings. As a bonus there are some outtakes at the end where you get to hear Herrmann berating the horn players and waxing lyrical over the viola d'amore.