The decision to go with these two scores was actually a consortium of minds here: Roger and i have talked about The Man Who Knew Too Much for many years, On Dangerous Ground is a favorite of William Stromberg's, and our contractor in Europe, Paul Talkington, is an amazing supporter of everything we do together. ODG is badly in need of a full length, state-of-the-art new recording. William and i talked at length about just what was involved in the scoring for TMWKTM, being a shorter score and as it it turned out - yayyy! - we discovered there is additional music that Herrmann wrote for the movie that was never used. So we started jumping at the thought of doing the 30-35 minutes of music Herrmann wrote for this Alfred Hitchcock movie, the last Herrmann/Hitchcock film score yet to be released. This now gave us a 45-minute score and one running just over a half hour, that would result in an incredibly exciting and well-packed album.
One of the cool tidbits that excites me, if not our audience, is that we'll be doing that spectacular "Death Hunt" in ODG with the scoring for full orchestra that includes eight French horns, six trombones, six trumpets... and two tubas! What a sound! And the solo viola d'amore will make for a beautifully haunting contrast. As to TMWKTM, that "Prelude is one masterful piece of brass and tympani-led excitement. With maestro Stromberg's expert knowledge of these two scores and his ability to get both passion and nuance from our players, this should be a really fantastic release to make Bernard Herrmann fans delirious!
--Doug