In Friday’s (10/25) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), Doug MacCash previews the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra’s October 26 concert, featuring a live performance of Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho with a screening of the movie itself. The newspaper invited “Kate Withrow, a talented LPO violinist originally from Austin, Texas, to demonstrate the icy musical accompaniment to the famous shower stabbing scene. While standing in her shower. … The video that resulted is a gas.… Withrow happily imitated the actions of doomed Janet Leigh—stepping into the shower, closing the curtain, grimacing in fear—except she did it while playing the stabbing minimalist melody on her violin. The bow pistoning up and down absurdly above the shower curtain is the biggest laugh. After all the foolishness was through, Withrow discussed the persistent power of Hermann’s score. Unlike some cinema composers, she said, Herrmann favored moodiness and tension…. ‘Flutes might have been able to produce the shrill pitch of the murder scene, [Withrow] said, but it took the violin to imply the percussive ‘penetrating’ violence of the extended grisly moment. The violin bow even looks a little like a knife, she pointed out. The sound in the small bathroom was menacing.”
Posted October 28, 2013
