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It's 15 months since the Royal Festival Hall featured the world premiere of Howard Shore's conducting of a performance of his score from 'Fellowship of the Ring' - the first part of what was promised to be a complete six movement symphony. With all three movies now out the way British fans were treated to that promised entire symphony, and it went down a storm!
There was no world premiere this time round (that honour had gone to New Zealand in December last year - see review here) but this was the first performance to feature the orchestra that Howard had referred to in a talk at the Royal College of Music the night before as 'the original cast'. It was also the first time I had heard the symphony featuring Scandinavian female vocalist Sissel. For the fans this was undoubtedly another huge success, as evidenced by the three standing ovations Howard Shore and the London Philharmonic received at the end of the "two hour plus" performance. For my part, I felt the first two movements in the first half were a lot "looser" than they had been either at the performance here last year, or at the New Zealand premiere, and at times the timings of different section of the orchestra seemed slightly off-kilter, but I'll admit I'm no expert (although a friend who's also seen several performances of the piece agreed with me).
		Sketches from Alan Lee and John Howe were featured to great effect to help 'place' the listener at the appropriate places in the story and I felt these sketches were much better choreographed to the music than they had been at Wellington, although I may be biased in that I couldn't see many of the projections in Wellington because of their low placement down below the stage area. The female vocalist Sissel seemed to receive a mixed reaction, if comments overheard as people were leaving after the concert were anything to go by, but for my part I thought she was sensational! Fans sometimes seem to expect the same Bjork or Annie Lennox impression as they're familiar with from the albums at these concerts, and I recall in New Zealand reading similar criticisms of the (two) female vocalists who featured in that concert. Personally I thought Sissel showed an incredible versatility in effectively covering difficult high Elvish operatic melodies as well as the 'pop' songs like "Gollum's Song" and "Into the West" and preferred her performance here to the two vocalists I'd heard at the Wellington premiere. As at New Zealand this was very much a 'fan' audience rather than a classical one. Several audience members were in costume! And one wonders if the London Philharmonic have ever been subject to loud applause BETWEEN each movement (which, for me, breaks the atmosphere) as much as they were subject to here. Such a 'non-classical' audience has its compensations though - the standing ovations and cheers at the end were more akin to those you'd hear at a rock concert. This time round Howard Shore seemed to have become much more of a 'performer'. He was clearly enjoying himself, with no signs of the nervousness I've sensed at previous concerts, giving his own eminently watchable performance as conductor. The baton was gone, and at times he danced around, looking rather like a dandy-ish Pied Piper figure as he jigged and skipped around, conducting with his arms at the same time. I've been concerned about his hunched posture at previous concerts, but that was gone this time and his movements seemed much more fluid and less stressful on the body. If I had to make a constructive criticism I'd say the same couple of faults as last year surfaced again this year. The boy soprano was not mic'ed up properly, making it hard to hear him, and he lacked the gusto and sheer enthusiasm Tom Atkins had displayed in Wellington. And, compared to the CD soundtracks, the male choir really struggled to generate the sheer power and volume of the Polynesian singers originally featured on the records. But these are minor issues, and at least there were no 'breaking notes' from the boy soprano as there had been at The Hollywood Bowl or the performance at this same venue last year, which had many of us wincing slightly during "Gandalf's Lament" at previous performances. So, all-in-all, another big success for Howard Shore and the orchestra, with many satisfied, even ecstatic, fans from all over the country and even outside the UK very glad indeed that they'd made the trip to 'the big city'.
Howard Shore gave a short Q&A session at the Royal College of Music the night before the concert. You can read the transcript here
Don't forget you can check out reports of lots of other Lord of the Rings -themed events in the Web Logs section

Email: ian@iansmith.co.uk