Lord of the Rings Symphony

When I heard that the amazing work behind the music of the Lord of the Rings trilogy has grown into a full orchestral concert, and that it was selling out all over the world, I had to jump on the bandwagon! Before I could put down my burning visa card, I had ordered two tickets to the performance in the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in downtown Baltimore.

After having fully experienced the concert, I have to admit, I was a bit let down. The music was, actually, excellent. Johan De Meij did a great job in his composition, and on that merit alone I would say the symphony was worth it. There was also a companion video, done in earthy tones and hilighting the story from the epic movie, that played along with the concert, and that was also well done. So what was the problem? The two elements together, at least in my opinion, left the listener submerged in an onslaught of visual and audio images that together distracted them from the whole. The orchestral concert tried too hard to be both an orchestral piece AND an epic movie in short. The end result was that I was less then satisfied as the visual told too little of the story to be truly satisfying, and the symphony itself showed a weakness in appeasing the visual needs of the presentation, leaving what should be some recurring themes throughout the synphony as a one hit wonder, and other tunes that played constantly throughout the epic trilogy should only have been played in the beginning, and perhaps the end of the symphony.

At the end of the performance, I didn't feel like I quite listened to what the symphony should have become, and was saddened, because I felt that the musical themes from the movie were strong enough to actually be pulled together into a symphony on their own merits without having to tie themselves so close to the plot and timeline of the movie. The result was an orchestral concert for the massess, with so much paid in the lifeblood of the symphony to appease the listeners that very little is left to truly enjoy over time.

If you are interested, you can buy the orchestral CD here.