Music of Middle-earth

    I had the pleasure of seeing The Detroit Symphony Orchestra perform Howard Shore‘s The Lord of the Rings Symphony on Saturday. It was a special one-night-only peformance, conducted by Markus Huber, with the Ford Motor Company Chorus and the Christ Church Grosse Pointe Choir of Boys and Girls. Guest soloist was Susan Egan, handling the elven songs; a young boy sang “In Dreams” but I did not catch his name.
    The chorus work was a bit shaky, but that’s forgivable considering the small amount of rehearsal time the full ensemble had (so I’m told). The chorus was also smaller than I would have expected. Curiously, although the songs from The Two Towers and The Return of the King were retained (sung by Susan Egan), the Enya material was absent.
    A large video screen showed artwork from the Peter Jackson movie. Sketches and drawings from John Howe and Alan Lee were displayed. I’d heard that film clips would be shown but I thought these sketches worked much better, setting the tone without upstaging the music.
    I thought I had a great seat, in the third row, but in fact I was much too close. All I could see and hear were strings. The horns were quite often just a rumor. This is less a problem with our orchestra than with the Fox Theater’s acoustics. It might be a great gem of a movie palace but every concert I’ve seen there has sounded terrible. Still, when the music was louder, everything got clearer and it was great pleasure to hear the orchestra surging across the Pelennor.
    By the way, if you’d like to recreate the Symphony in the comfort of your home, put the following tracks in your playlist. (It would only be a rough approximation however since you would be missing some bridging material.) And if you’d like to recreate my concert-going experience, sit right next to the left speaker.