Concert Diary
Twentieth Anniversary Season
Hitchcock and Hollywood
with Tippi Hedren
Star of ‘Marnie’ and ‘The Birds’
Bringing The Great Days Of Hollywood To Life
Fairfield Concert Hall, Croydon
Saturday 17th March 2012 at 7.30pm
Tippi Hedren, the last of Alfred Hitchcock’s glamorous blondes, will be on-stage at the Fairfield to tell you of her time working with Hollywood’s master of suspense. A critic wrote, ‘Hitchcock had given us one Grace Kelly in a generation and seems intent on giving us another in the person of Tippi Hedren, a classically beautiful, regally poised blonde.’
With clips from some of Hitchcock’s most famous films on the Fairfield’s Big-Screen, Miss Hedren will discuss the background to famous Hitchcock films, such as Vertigo, Psycho, Marnie, The Man Who Knew Too Much and North By North West.
Alfred Hitchcock left his hometown, East London, to be at the heart of the Film World in Hollywood. With his quirky approach to film-making, he had a deep understanding of music’s role in heightening tension. Even so, The Birds has no music, while Psycho uses nothing but string instruments. Bernard Herrmann, Hitchcock’s favourite composer, won an Oscar for The Devil & Daniel Webster.
With the critically acclaimed New Queen’s Hall Orchestra on stage to play some of Hollywood’s greatest scores, this will be an exceptional evening for anyone interested in the cinema and fine music-making. John Farrer, a great American conductor and a devoted fan of the NQHO, will guarantee the full Hollywood treatment.
Tippi Hedren is not just a Hollywood Star. She is also famous for her love affair with wild animals, meeting her first lion while filming in Africa. Ever since, she has devoted herself to looking after some 60 Big-Cats, including lions, tigers, leopards and cougars at her reserve in California. Many of these superb animals are cast-offs from zoos and circuses. With her daughter, Melanie Griffith, Miss Hedren produced and appeared in a film entitled ‘Roar’, which helped establish her big-cat reserve. Perhaps she will tell us a little about this wonderful work. What an extraordinary evening we shall have!
Click here for Miss Hedren’s website
Psycho Bernard Herrmann
Vertigo Bernard Herrmann
Marnie Bernard Herrmann
North by Northwest Bernard Herrmann
Torn Curtain John Addison
Strangers on a Train Dimitri Tiomkin
The Man Who Knew Too Much Bernard Herrmann
Rear Window Franz Waxman
Programme to be confirmed
With its distinctive sound and distinctive approach to performance, The New Queen’s Hall Orchestra offers a markedly different experience from other orchestras. A few seasons back, John Farrer opened his cycle of live-concert recordings with the NQHO playing the Second Symphony of Johannes Brahms. Recorded in the excellent acoustics of the Fairfield Hall, this first CD was acclaimed by the critics for its mould-breaking nature. Now, Farrer moves on to the exciting potential of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony.
Joining him as soloist is Lydia Mordkovitch, a legendary Russian violinist and winner of a Gramophone Award and a Diapason d’Or. With 50 CDs on the prestigious Chandos label alone, Lydia is one of the most recorded violinists of recent times. Her interpretation of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1 has all the majesty and maturity to be expected of a pupil of David Oistrakh.
“We have lost so much. The wind chording here caressed the ear, the strings were balmy and pure and the velvet-toned horns had a quite indescribable beauty. This is how music should be made.”
Fairfield Hall Concert
Brian Hunt
The Evening Standard
Tickets
£31.50, £28.50, £25.50, £22.00, £18.00, £12.00
