Lord of the Rings Symphony

Lord of the Rings Symphony
Ludwig Wicki, conductor
Powell Hall
St. Louis, MO
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Dress Circle Box X, Seat 3
$65

Roy is a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings story. He has the books in the trilogy, other books Tolkien wrote about Middle Earth, books about the series, the radio series, the DVDs, the special edition DVDs. It was a no-brainer that we'd see the score performed live by the St. Louis Symphony. Me? I liked the movies well enough, but never got past reading The Hobbit. It was kind of exciting to be heading to Powell Hall. This was my first time there, even though I've lived in St. Louis for eight years now. I guess I'm not as cultured as I think.

We got lucky with the tickets. Our seats were in the Dress Circle level, which is the equivalent of front row balcony. It provided an excellent view of all the musicians. Wonderful sound as well. The seats in this section were real chairs too, with lots of leg room and elbow room. Very comfortable.

I had some reservations about this performance coming into it. A movie score is designed to fit what's being shown on screen. Something that's a great score might not work well on its own. And the three movies combined are something like twelve hours long. Different bits of the score were put together to make up this two hour program. They would be showing visuals along with the music, but I still wondered if I'd get bored.

It was such a spectacle. In addition to the orchestra, there was a boys' choir, a choir of adults, solo vocalists. The program notes list well over 100 people. The visuals were illustrations by artists Alan Lee and John Howe.

I'm going to sound so unrefined here, but I got bored. The music was supposed to follow the order of the books, and the artwork was supposed to help. I couldn't follow it at all after the beginning section. Maybe I don't know the story well enough. The artwork was often too abstract for me to follow - pictures of individual characters rather than scenes. I liked the second half better than the first. I really liked the featured vocal soloists. Kaitlyn Lusk, the featured soprano, had a beautiful voice and the boy soprano did a good job too.

Everyone else in the theater loved it, and gave it a long standing ovation. I wasn't disappointed; I figured I wouldn't get much out of two hours of scenery music, no matter how well executed it was. It was a nice evening to get dressed up and go to a fancy venue and nice for Roy to get to add another LOTR event to his fan experience.