This Sunday just passed, Darcy and I were very lucky to be in possession of two tickets to see Howard Shore conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of The Lord of the Rings Symphony. We booked the tickets when they first went on sale, and they sold out very quickly.
There’s no doubt the Royal Festival Hall is not the most inspiring work of architecture I’ve ever been in. A leftover from the Festival of Britain; it has dated badly and even the interior seems not to have had much attention since the day it was built. There seems to have been more effort put in to making sure there innumerable over-priced eating and drinking spots rather than making the concert hall the best it could be. But that’s not important really.
Howard Shore walked on to riotous applause, I’ve read in other places that reaction from the audience was more “fannish” than one would generally expect in a classical performance. I suspect that is probably true, I’m no music buff and this was my first ever orchestral concert so I’ll defer to Darcy the Muso on that one. He concurs.
Our seats were quite far back but we still had a pretty decent view, although I wouldn’t have complained about a better one! Howard Shore was clearly enjoying himself, his almost Presley-like shaking left leg was highly entertaining, although I had to crane left a bit to watch properly.
The symphony itself was 6 movements, with the majority of material coming from The Fellowship of the Ring. Very little was left out of that over its two movements (I’m comparing it to the CD version here though) and it was hard not to mentally check the various parts of the film off. A large screen was utilised to project concept work from Alan Lee and John Howe onto, which gave a visual frame of reference, if it were needed, for which parts of the film the score was from. It was a beautiful touch, and a real treat to watch such great work unfolding in front of us, but then I am biased about concept work anyway. The interval came after the first two movements, which together were around the same length as the four that came after, understandable really as TFotR contains most of the main themes of the piece.
I can’t really comment on the technical quality of the performance, to my untrained ear it was beautiful; particularly the boy’s choir. A friend remarked that the male voice choir could have been bigger and I tend to agree, they didn’t seem to have quite as much weight as I expected them to have, but to complain about that feels like hair-splitting. There might have been the odd bum note, but I can’t say I spotted any, and the solos were quite heartbreaking; particularly those sung in Elvish. The female soloist, Sisselle, seemed a little strident in ‘Gollum’s Song’ and ‘Into the West’, she has a strong clear voice but I must say I still prefer the recorded versions of both.
Shore received a riotous standing ovation at the end, which seemed to go on forever, during which I legged it down the stairs and took the above photo… cut me some slack my hands were tired!
Of course the highlight of the day had to be after we came out, and met up with a bunch of friends we’ve made online from here at the Tangent Universe, and previously over on the BBCi message boards. Despite my utter fear of meeting anyone new and my complete lack of social skills we managed to say hello and hang around for a short while with a truly lovely bunch of people. It’s a shame that the London trains, and trains from MK are so flipping unreliable at the moment, otherwise we might have stayed longer. As it was we didn’t have a clue whether we’d be able to get a train back to Luton; which we’d had to make a dash for and leave the car there at the last minute thanks to the Trainline.com not bothering to inform people that the trains they were advertising were nonexistent.
Wonderful day, wonderful music and lovely company. Shame I’m such a stress monkey really.
Related Links:
Royal Festival Hall on Wikipedia
Howard Shore.com
Lord of the Rings.net
Recent Comments