Endless Night

Quartet Records is proud to present its second world premiere recording of a previously unreleased classic Bernard Herrmann score, following the release of The Bride Wore Black in 2018.

Herrmann's score for Endless Night looks both forward and backward in his career. Its romantic elements recall passages from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Vertigo, while its more austere aspects anticipate the more motivic-based writing of It's Alive and Sisters. To suggest the menace beneath the romance, Herrmann used a Moog synthesizer for its wailing and otherworldly timbres. Some of the score is based on a setting of words from William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence". There is also an achingly beautiful love theme, used by Herrmann as a "red herring" in this intriguing plot, and several cues that rely on color (Herrmann was, of course, a master orchestrator) and staid harmonic progressions for their chilling effect.

Reconstructed from Herrmann's original manuscript (provided by the publisher), the music is conducted by prestigious composer/conductor Fernando Velázquez, performed by the Basque National Orchestra, with original Moog synthesizer sessions played by Toni Saigi. We also had the incredibly good fortune of securing the magnificent voice of classical soprano Núria Rial for the vocals.

Recorded on the OSE orchestra stage in September 2019 by Marc Blanes, with additional Moog sessions in 2020, the album was produced by Edouard Dubois and Jose M. Benitez (with executive production entirely by Quartet Records) and mastered by Chris Malone. The booklet includes extensive liner notes by associate producer Frank K. DeWald, who discusses both film and score.