New York Times says that Lord of the Rings concert at Radio City Music Hall "surged" and "roared"

image courtesy of Radio City Music Hall

In what might just have been the concert of the decade (save possibly the competing Star Wars symphony tour), the 21st Century Symphony Orchestra descended upon Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Saturday night to present the entire score to Peter Jackson’s epic The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring live set in-time with the film, which played on a massive screen.

In the October 11, 2009 issue of The New York Times, music critic Stephen Holden said that at various points in the performance, the “music didn’t need an accompanying story or screen images to transport you.”

Here is an excerpt of his feature:

“Because it focused on the music in the first installment of Peter Jackson’s “Ring” trilogy (for which Mr. Shore composed 10 hours of music), the event, repeated on Saturday, was a balancing act. With the relationship between sound and image adjusted, Mr. Shore’s intricate, stylistically far-reaching fabric of leitmotifs surged to the fore.

Normally an orchestral soundtrack, with identifying themes, serves as expressive musical illustration of a story. But even when the themes are connected, a film score heard independently almost always sounds episodic and fragmentary. And so it seemed during the first half, even as the movie ran. Much of that half is devoted to background exposition of J. R. R. Tolkien’s elaborate mythology, and the music erupted in fits and starts. But when the Fellowship set out to return the ring to Mount Doom, the concert roared to life.

Because Tolkien’s Middle-earth is an imaginary world set in a timeless, prescientific past when the miraculous was magical rather than technological, Mr. Shore had the tricky challenge of evoking mystical and mythological times in an accessible contemporary mode. Like the scores for most Hollywood epics, “The Lord of the Rings” stays mostly on the safe side of jarring dissonance. Conceptually even more ambitious than John Williams’s music for the “Star Wars” movies, it is less triumphal and wham-bang crowd-pleasing, although it has plenty of drama. Its main theme, composed in a minor key, is at once elevated and brooding.”

Read the full review here.

According to fan reports, Lord of the Rings stars Elijah Wood and Billy Boyd, as well as score composer Howard Shore were all in attendance at the event.

In related news, the official concert website has announced that they will continue this monstrous musical experience next year, as on October 8 & 9, 2010, they are scheduled to perform The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers!