A portrait in Piano

Although I normally avoid personal memories when writing CD booklets, the temptation in this case was too great to resist. Therefore, I will embellish the following without mercy with memories – in the full knowledge that they will tell the reader nothing important, but that they remain valuable in my own eyes. As a musician since my early childhood and adolescence, films were for many years the only outlet I could find for my musical practice. "Mama, can we watch a film?" was our daily plea, and "A month without films" was the most feared punishment. My father was – and still is – a great film lover, and someone who knew and remembered dozens of films from his youth. The typical Christmas, birthday and Sint-Nikolaas gift was therefore a video cassette of a great film classic. We began, like all children, with the Walt Disney classics, but soon moved on to very different areas. An anecdote that is endlessly retold in our family has my (younger) brother as its main character. He must have been about seven years old. I had given a piano recital, and in the audience (and among the guests at the subsequent dinner) was a man who was probably the most important Italian film critic, the author of the most important Italian history books and film encyclopedias. This very respected professor asked condescendingly of my little brother: "Dear child, what is your favourite film?". The face he made when the boy answered: "Aleksander Nevski", was priceless. I must have been about eleven years old when my father decided it was time to start watching thrillers, and the first was The Man Who Knew Too Much (in the version with Doris Day). It was a revelation. First of all, the impressive and crucial role that musical performances played in that film captured the heart of my younger self: it is indeed one of the most beautiful films about music I have ever seen. But there was also the story, the romance, the theme of family love, the espionage plot, the rhythm of the film... I will never forget the tension I literally felt then, and I immediately fell in love with Hitchcock and crime films. Later, my brother, father and I watched most of Hitchcock's films (mama joined us occasionally, but she was usually so tired that she fell asleep watching Vertigo, which is no ordinary feat). And of course we also enjoyed the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series, which was broadcast in Italy many years ago and which was a moment of relaxation in our busy days. Hitchcock's unmistakable silhouette and his mischievous smile, accompanied by the grotesque music of Charles Gounod, became another iconic element of my youth. The music of Alfred Hitchcock Presents is appropriately a piece originally entitled Funeral March for a Marionette: it is difficult to say whether it appealed to the great director because of the sound or because of the title. Indeed, even the title itself could be understood as a summary of Hitchcock's characteristic style: a mix of black humour, of playing with mankind's greatest fear – death –, irony and the protagonism of the director himself. It is well known that "Hitch" had the habit of portraying himself in a cameo in every film, and Hitchcock fans – like us – are always on the hunt for these fleeting appearances – until the riveting action of the plot becomes so powerful that you can think of nothing else. And although music is not a lead player in many of Hitchcock's films, it remains a fundamental element of his filmography and his filmic genius. I have already mentioned The Man Who Knew Too Much, and I cannot help but devote a few lines to it. However, since it is impossible to discuss the role of music in it without mentioning some crucial moments in the plot, we advise readers to skip directly to the asterisks below if they have not yet seen the film. And do so quickly, because it is an absolute masterpiece. In The Man Who Knew Too Much, singer Doris Day is on holiday in Morocco with her husband and young son when they witness a murder; the victim, breathing his last, confides a vital secret to Day's husband. To prevent him from revealing what he knows – and thereby saving the life of an important statesman – the "villains" kidnap their son. The two most important scenes of the film are then coupled with music (although I would also add the tragicomic singing of the hymns in the "Ambrose Chapel" and the improvised paraphrase of the text by the couple). Day rescues her son, who is trapped in the embassy, by singing the melody of Que sera sera at the top of her lungs, to which the boy responds by whistling loudly. He will be saved by his father, guided by the music of his wife and son. And she also saves the statesman by letting out a sharp cry just before an iconic cymbal clash in a symphonic piece for orchestra and choir, during a performance in a packed Albert Hall. The perfect timing of her cry, in a musical rest preceding the musical climax of the piece, disrupts the murderer's concentration crucially, and the shot misses its intended target. These two unique moments are represented by the two pieces on this album, corresponding to tracks 7 and 8. * * * * Another thriller par excellence is undoubtedly Rear Window, a film full of genius, in which the main character is a photojournalist who is confined within the walls of his apartment until he recovers from a broken leg. He is the fiancé of a brilliant Grace Kelly, who plays the role of a lady as refined, fashionable and well-behaved as an action hero, accustomed to adventure and enjoying it. The only pleasure he can afford, during his forced standstill, is observing the lives of his neighbours – and he does this very professionally, zooming in and out with his photographic lenses into their apartments. Here too, music plays a fundamental role. It is the element that promotes the birth of a new couple, protects a character from suicide; but it is also the element that stills time so that at a crucial moment the main character loses control of the situation. Music is thus a fundamental element of the plot, but it also accentuates it ironically, touchingly, "just", and thereby reflects the pattern of music consumption that is characteristic of the society Hitchcock sketched. Just as in everyday life, various kinds of music interweave themselves in Rear Window, creating an interplay of genres and styles that forms the counterpoint of our lives. Hitchcock indeed knew how to characterize scenes very well using music of all genres and was fully open to the possibilities that music of all times and styles offered. There are events that are particularly striking and which also show that even a strong personality like Hitchcock's could be open to suggestions from the composer. One of the most celebrated scenes in film history is the shower scene in Psycho – I only gathered the courage to watch it in my twenties, but I am proud to be able to report to the reader that I could sleep the next night. Hitchcock had imagined a scene without music here, but Herrmann, the composer, forced him to listen to the screeching violin sounds he had created. The result was a masterpiece of a scene. The collaboration between Hitchcock and Herrmann is therefore considered one of the most important in film history. Unfortunately, their relationship ended abruptly, but their mutual appreciation remained, and Herrmann would continue to speak of Hitchcock in the best possible terms until the end. Their collaboration is represented here by some films whose atmosphere – and consequently their music – could not differ more from each other. Hitchcock's mastery in orchestrating psychological tension finds a convincing counterpart in the musical dimension of North by Northwest. In one of the most emblematic scenes of the film – a suggestive dialogue that unfolds in the refined setting of a restaurant car – the music openly abandons dramatic gestures in favour of a smooth, almost dance-like phrasing, whose refined contours evoke the expressive world of 19th-century ballet, filtered through a pronounced cinematic lens. Vertigo derives its extraordinary suspense in part from the unusual setting. Here both composer and director play with a fascinating paradox, namely that of a kind of "domestic exoticism". Thanks to American history, there are parts of the United States that resemble enclaves from distant lands, miraculously transported within a few kilometres of a major modern metropolis. The enigmatic, fascinating and also disturbing character of Carlotta is matched by the music associated with her, while the main scene of the film – with its extraordinary visual effects, obtained through a unique camera movement – is further enhanced in its emotional content by the accompanying music. A very different situation is that of The Trouble with Harry, one of the funniest black comedies ever made. Hitchcock's sense of humour is at its best here, with the portraits of the bizarre characters and their interactions, which prompt an entire community of "good guys" to become complicit in an apparent murder, while poor Harry goes in and out of his improvised grave with the greatest nonchalance. Rather than merely offering a selection of well-known cinematic references, this project sketches a continuum extending from the classical soundscapes of cinema in the middle of the last century to more contemporary idioms. The selection does not follow a chronological order, but an underlying aesthetic logic, in which the expressive modes of masters from the past – Rózsa, Waxman, Herrmann – are reflected and extended into newer languages, such as in the recording of a Poulenc miniature (from Rope), recontextualized within a tension-driven narrative frame. Spellbound combines gestures reminiscent of concert traditions from the Romantic era with sound textures reflecting the technological experiments of the mid-twentieth century, illustrated by the characteristic presence of the theremin. Together, these sounds will evoke memories of unforgettable moments from one's film experience, but even in abstraction from the images, the music on this album is certainly worth listening to, enjoying and reliving again and again. Chiara Bertoglio © 2025