Matteo Monico - Alfred Hitchcock: A Portrait in Piano (2025) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

A musician since the tenderest age, for many years of my childhood and adolescence movies represented the one outlet from musical practice I could have. “Mommy, can we watch a movie?” was our daily plea, and “No movies for one month” was the most dreaded punishment. My father was – and still is – a great movie fan, and somebody who knew and remembered dozens of films which he had seen in his youth. The typical Christmas, birthday, and Santa Claus present was, therefore, a videocassette of a great classic of cinema. We began, as all children, with the Walt Disney classics, but moved rather soon to very different fields. An anecdote which is endlessly recounted in our family has my (younger) brother as a protagonist. He must have been about seven years old. I had played a piano recital, and, in the audience (as well as among the guests in the dinner which followed it) there was a man who was probably the most important Italian cinema critic, the author of the foremost Italian histories and encyclopedias of cinema. This much-revered professor condescendingly asked my little brother: “Dear child, what is your favourite movie?”. The face he made when the boy answered “Aleksander Nevsky” was something to write home about.

I must have been about eleven when Dad decided it was time for us to begin watching thrillers, and the first one was The Man Who Knew Too Much (in the version with Doris Day). It was an epiphany. For one thing, the impressive and crucial role played by music performances in that movie conquered the heart of my younger self: it is, indeed, one of the most beautiful films about music I ever saw. But there were also the story, the romance, the theme of family love, the espionage plot, the rhythm of the movie… I will never forget the thrill I literally experienced on that occasion, and I immediately fell in love with Hitchcock and with ì crime movies. Later on, with my brother and father, we watched most of the films by Hitchcock (Mum would occasionally join us, but she was usually so tired that she managed to fall asleep while watching Vertigo, which is no ordinary feat). And, of course, we also enjoyed the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which was broadcast many years ago in Italy, and which represented a moment of relax in our busy days. Hitchcock’s unmistakable silhouette and his mischievous smile, accompanied by the grotesque music by Charles Gounod, became another iconic element of my youthful years.

Appropriately, the score of Alfred Hitchcock Presents is a piece originally titled Funeral March for a Marionette: it is difficult to say whether it appealed to the great director for its sound or for its title of for both. Indeed, even the title itself could be taken as summarizing Hitchcock’s landmark style: a mixture of black humour, of playing with the human beings’ worst 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 within each film, and Hitchcock enthusiasts – as we were – are always hunting for these flash appearances – until the plot’s gripping action becomes so powerful that one cannot think of anything else.

And if music is not a protagonist itself in many movies by Hitchcock, it remains a fundamental element of his filmography and of his cinematic genius. I mentioned already The Man Who Knew Too Much, and I cannot avoid consecrating a few lines to it. However, since it is quite impossible to discuss the role of music in it without citing some crucial moments of the plot, readers are kindly advised to skip to the asterisks below in case they have not yet watched the movie. And to watch it soon, since 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, with his last breaths, entrusts a vital secret to Day’s husband. In order to prevent him from revealing what he knows – and therefore saving the life of an important statesman – the “bad guys” kidnap their son. The two most important scenes of the movie are then linked to music (although I would also add the tragicomic singing of the church anthems in the “Ambrose Chapel” and the couple’s impromptu paraphrase of the lyrics). Day recovers her son, who is held captive in the Embassy, by singing to the top of her lungs the tune of Que sera sera, to which the boy responds by whistling it loudly. He will be rescued by his dad, led by the music made by his wife and son. And she also saves the statesman by uttering a sharp cry just before an iconic clash of cymbals within a symphonic piece for orchestra and chorus, in a performance taking place in a packed Albert Hall. The perfect timing of her shout, in a musical rest preceding the musical climax of the piece, crucially destroys the killer’s concentration, and the shot misses its intended target. These two unique moments are represented by the two pieces recorded in this album, corresponding to tracks no. 7 and 8.



Tracklist:
01. Alfred Hitchcock Presents
02. Spellbound
03. Rope. Mouvement Perpetuel: No. 1
04. Rear Window. Lisa
05. The Trouble with Harry - Ouverture/The Doctor
06. The Wrong Man - Prelude
07. The Man Who Knew Too Much - Storm Clouds Cantata
08. The Man Who Knew Too Much
09. North By Northwest: No. 1, Prelude
10. North By Northwest: No. 2, Conversation Piece
11. Vertigo: No. 1, Prelude
12. Vertigo: No. 2, Carlotta’s Portrait
13. Vertigo: No. 3, Scene D’amour
14. Psycho: No. 1, Prelude/The Murder/Finale
15. Marnie - Prelude
16. Family Plot - End Titles


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