Psycho Live! @ The Albert Hall

Long before John Williams or Ennio Morricone picked up the baton, Bernard Herrmann was the ultimate go-to guy for Hollywood scores. From his debut motion picture gig on Citizen Kane to the sleazy saxophones of Taxi Driver, his best work spans nearly 35 years in the business and is a massive factor in why we consider such films to be the most iconic of their generation.

Tonight, the Manchester Camerata plays one of Herrmann’s greatest compositions, the soundtrack to Hitchcock’s Psycho, live underneath a big screen showing of the film. The Albert Hall is a choice spot, with a fair few of the audience decked out in suitably odd garb and those freaky contact lenses that freaky people wear.

The lights go down as conductor Anthony Gabriele ushers in muted strings for the title theme. Hitchcock’s notoriously tight budget for production meant that Herrmann only agreed to work on the film after culling the full orchestra, relying solely on strings to get the job done... which actually worked out alright.

Few other opening preludes are so unsettling. This is a world instantly defined by minor major seventh chords and recurring disturbances. Within 30 seconds, we get our first glimpse of that haunting violin refrain – the same eight bars that Busta Rhymes put to use on Gimme Some More. By the time the frantic credit sequence gives way to a lazy working day in Phoenix, Arizona, trouble is already afoot.

As the plot unfolds, something curious starts to happen outside of the script. It’s not like having the music played live makes the film more terrifying than it already is, but it really does show how two artistic visions fuse together. Killer lines – such as Norman Bates’ cunning “My mother isn’t quite herself today...” – only hit as hard because they're aided by uneasy melodies that flow almost unnoticed in and out of the dialogue. The back-and-forth between director and composer is literally there for all to see.

Every stringed entrance and exit is timed to perfection, for which both Gabriele and the Camerata deserve serious applause. The infamous shower scene doesn’t disappoint either, a melee of flailing arms and thrashing bows that more than matches the on-screen violence. For those environmentally conscious, the real horror is how long the water is left running.

Anyway, by the time Bates is outed by the courthouse psychiatrist as a textbook Freudian nightmare, little work is left for the imagination. Perhaps the greatest illusion still standing is that the impact of Psycho is down to Alfred Hitchcock alone. If there's a lesson to be learned from tonight it's that Hitchcock's eye and Herrmann's ear share the same mastery of suspense – and one cannot express it fully without the other.

Well, that and probably don't dress up like your dead mum and start stabbing everyone.