The Snows of Kilimanjaro / 5 Fingers

Amongst the stars of film music's golden age, Bernard Herrmann has probably received the most attention in terms of re-releases and re-recordings and so most new albums are of less known works. I think it would be fair to say that neither The Snows of Kilimanjaro nor 5 Fingers are remembered today, but in terms of music The Snows of Kilimanjaro is perhaps the better known, mostly through the inclusion of the lovely Memory Waltz on several Herrmann compilations. Naturally, it turns out to be one of the high spots of the entire score and is given a particularly delicate reading here, certainly more refined than Herrmann's own occasionally less graceful re-recordings.

Perhaps the most atypical section of The Snows of Kilimanjaro is the Overture, full of swirling strings that for me represent the wind and snow atop a mountain peak, although the liner notes suggest that it suggests the obsession of the characters. Either way, it's a vibrant beginning to what is otherwise a fairly gentle score. For Herrmann, the tone is surprisingly warm and based around a gentle love theme, most fully developed during The River, although as is usual with Herrmann, there is an undercurrent of darkness to even the more romantic passages. Only a couple of moments, aside from the Overture, intrude on the otherwise low key atmosphere, both The Hyena and Panic open with dramatic orchestral crashes, while the Finale swells to a surprisingly brash conclusion.

5 Fingers is, by all accounts, the better of the two films, a thriller starring James Mason. Being a thriller, there are ideas that foreshadow Herrmann's work with Hitchcock, notably an ascending string figure towards the end of the suspenseful The Film which could easily be out of a Hitchcock score. 5 Fingers's exotic location of Turkey gave Herrmann latitude with some local colour although The Old Street is the only cue in which this is very apparent. Much of the music is suspenseful, but some of it isn't always that interesting on disc, although Departure and Alone are two good examples of effective and musically interesting tension building material.

As score restorer John Morgan comments in his final thoughts to the liner notes, much of The Snows of Kilimanjaro and 5 Fingers is a touch static, but William Stromberg makes those cues, with the repeated musical cells that Herrmann so loved, interesting with subtle variations in volume and emphasis. However, it would be fair to say that neither score is classic Herrmann, although they are not without their moments. Morgan also mentions that great efforts were made to follow the composer's instructions and intentions with regard to balance, the result being yet another superbly faithful reproduction and in this case almost certainly more potent than either of the original tracks as they were recorded in mono, which would likely obscure some of the more subtle touches in Herrmann's orchestration.