This post was originally intended for publication shortly after my wife and I attended the St. Louis Symphony's performance of Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings Symphony in September of last year. I figured that since the Kansas City Symphony will be presenting it in May, I'd take the liberty of finally posting this.
Last Friday (September 19), die Frau and I had the opportunity to attend the St. Louis Symphony's performance of Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings Symphony.
For those interested in making your own playlist on your iPod, the track titles correspond pretty much exactly to the original commercial releases, not the complete recordings.
The Fellowship of the Ring:
Movement One
The Prophecy-Concerning Hobbits-The Shadow of the Past-A Short Cut to Mushrooms-The Old Forest-A Knife in the Dark
Movement Two
Many Meetings-The Rings Goes South-A Journey in the Dark-The Bridge of Khazad-dûm-Lothlórien-Gandalf's Lament-Farewell to Lórien-The Great River-The Breaking of the Fellowship
The Two Towers:
Movement Three
Foundations of Stone-The Taming of Sméagol-The Riders of Rohan-The Black Gate is Closed-Evenstar-The White Rider-Treebeard-The Forbidden Pool
Movement Four
The Hornburg-Forth Eorlingas-Isengard Unleashed-Gollum's Song
The Return of the King:
Movement Five
Hope and Memory-The White Tree-The Steward of Gondor-Cirith Ungol-Andúril
Movement Six
The End of All Things-The Return of the King-The Grey Havens-Into the West
The one thing that caught me a little off guard was how some of the passages were edited. For example, The Two Towers' "Foundations of Stone" ("Glamdring" on the Complete Recordings) ends abruptly and segues immediately to "The Taming of Sméagol" before the chorus enters with its goodness. For the life of me I can't figure out why Shore cut it this way, but he did so that's how it is. Personally I think it would've played much better had he allowed the passage to conclude in its film form.
There were minor quibbles about the performance. From my own experience with this sort of thing I think the percussion parts are largely notated at least one dynamic too loud throughout. When the percussion section were playing full-out they were overpowering the entire orchestra and that's never a good idea (unless that's the idea).
The young lady who performed the vocal solos had a very nice tone though she didn't seem to be giving full breath support and pitch occasionally (a little too frequently actually) sagged. That being said, one has to remember that Shore's music for these films, while very lyrical, isn't always vocally friendly (you trying singing some of those lines without taking a breath!). She also did a nice job modifying her voice for each solo. Just as each of Tolkien's races has its own language and manner of speech, Shore effectively mirrors him giving each race its own music. So, too, does each of the vocal solos have to be conveyed in the spirit of each race's music and I feel like the soloists did a good job of doing that.
In the film/album version of "Gandalf's Lament" there's a part where there's a solo vocal performed by Elizabeth Fraser (former frontgal for Cocteau Twins). There's also a violin solo played senza vibrato along with it. The problem is that the violinist was always a half-count behind to vocalist (who was in time). While this created a disturbing sense of instability and added greatly to the affect of the passage, I don't think that's what Howard Shore had in mind (though it does give me a few ideas).
What impressed me most was how good the chorus sounded. Singing in an invented language is difficult enough; singing well in an invented language is beyond difficult.
I must confess that I was actually pretty impressed with the way the orchestra played. "But, Herr, you're always going on about how the SLSO always plays well." This is true, but one has to remember that professional orchestral musicians play a lot of film music on pops concerts, they don't always respect film music. They played like they respected the music; and even if they didn't like it, the important thing is that they sold it like they did.
