More reminiscences on Herrmann by Mrs. Kaufman, wife of session violinist Louis Kaufman…
Benny had a marvelous enthusiasm for music, it was sort of a catholic taste that was all-encompassing somehow. One time we were in New York with him, and he wanted all the musicians, the string players to stand up. He’d read someplace that Von Bulow had asked the orchestra - had the orchestra stand up, the violins, the violas, everybody except the cellos. And the musicians were outraged. They said no, we don’t want to stand up. And he said, “Oh please, come on let’s try, let’s see if it makes any difference in the sound.” And finally they stood up and they played something and it was almost like transformation - one couldn’t believe with what - well, more expressivity, more enthusiasm, they didn’t realize that they thought they were just playing the same way, but when they stood up, they played better. And then of course he couldn’t get them to do that very long. They sat down and they went back to the regular performance. But he would get ideas from all sorts of obscure books that he would find.
2 responses so far ↓
Tom Kiefner // March 20, 2006 at 3:21 pm
I watched a 1973 Herrmann scored film last night Sisters and while the Brian DePalma film was not very good in my opinion the scoring by Benny of the stabbing scene was excellent. Years ago I had purchased the LP and had listened many times to it, noting the similiarity of sound to other scores such as Cape Fear. But I had never viewed the film. And while I found this score to fall into the category of a short sequential phrase being repeated over and over again (something he liked to do) the disturbing dissonant sequence made me jump slightly even though I knew what was coming.
sdtom // March 20, 2006 at 4:18 pm
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