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Essex · 05-24-2004, 02:35 AM

To all those Brits who are thinking of seeing Howard Shore and the LPO perform the LOTR Symphony, grab a ticket for the royal albert hall performance on Bilbo and Frodo's birthday. I got the news from Ian Smith's website.

The symphony is amazing. Saw it yesterday at the royal festival hall. too many high points to list here (and the only low point was that they didn't play the piece where fordo and sam are climbing up mount doom) but it has now given me even MORE of an appreciation of the music. It's stunning to watch Howard and the LPO perform. You can see they are working their socks off.

The singers were very good, (although the missus didn't like aragorn's replacement, and I admit he was a bit too baritone but still good), but the thing that held us all was the atmosphere. There was clever use of alan and john's drawings that we've seen on the EE DVDs. And it's intersting that the pictures they have used do not give the plot away of what happened in the book. (as if anyone there had not read the book or seen the film.....!). The symphony does not go over repeated ground (accept for the main 'theme tune'), I was at first dissapointed not to hear Evenstar in the LOTR part, but of course it cropped up in the TT part. The final last 'tracks' were extremly well performed, from 'The End of all things' down to the last part after 'Into the West'. The standing ovations were well earned.

To add to all this, I managed to collar Brian Sibley in the interval for a few seconds to thank him for his BBC radio adaptation that I've grown up with.

Beg, borrow (but don't steal!) to get a ticket to september 22nd. I'm trying to talk the missus into letting me go to the albert hall too.

05-24-2004, 02:35 AM	#5
Essex Ghost Prince of Cardolan Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Essex, England Posts: 886	To all those Brits who are thinking of seeing Howard Shore and the LPO perform the LOTR Symphony, grab a ticket for the royal albert hall performance on Bilbo and Frodo's birthday. I got the news from Ian Smith's website. The symphony is amazing. Saw it yesterday at the royal festival hall. too many high points to list here (and the only low point was that they didn't play the piece where fordo and sam are climbing up mount doom) but it has now given me even MORE of an appreciation of the music. It's stunning to watch Howard and the LPO perform. You can see they are working their socks off. The singers were very good, (although the missus didn't like aragorn's replacement, and I admit he was a bit too baritone but still good), but the thing that held us all was the atmosphere. There was clever use of alan and john's drawings that we've seen on the EE DVDs. And it's intersting that the pictures they have used do not give the plot away of what happened in the book. (as if anyone there had not read the book or seen the film.....!). The symphony does not go over repeated ground (accept for the main 'theme tune'), I was at first dissapointed not to hear Evenstar in the LOTR part, but of course it cropped up in the TT part. The final last 'tracks' were extremly well performed, from 'The End of all things' down to the last part after 'Into the West'. The standing ovations were well earned. To add to all this, I managed to collar Brian Sibley in the interval for a few seconds to thank him for his BBC radio adaptation that I've grown up with. Beg, borrow (but don't steal!) to get a ticket to september 22nd. I'm trying to talk the missus into letting me go to the albert hall too. Last edited by Essex; 05-24-2004 at 02:45 AM.