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Music from The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: (Compilation)
It was only a matter of time before Howard Shore's three magnificent
The
Lord of the Rings scores would be re-interpreted by conductors,
re-recorded by ensembles, and re-released on labels other than the original.
In the case of Silva and The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, the
opportunity came quickly after the release of
The Return of the King
at the end of 2003. The ensemble/label collaboration has yielded a
significant wealth of film music re-recordings over the years, with some
hit-and-miss recordings in the early 1990's maturing into some outstanding
efforts in the late 1990's and early 2000's. With much of the most famous
film music already recorded by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and
the Crouch End Festival Chorus, it is not often that a project involving as
much soundtrack re-recording as this one is undertaken by that group these
days. Silva producer James Fitzpatrick was already prepared with
arrangements of Shore's trilogy of music just a month after
The Return of
the King opened in theatres, allowing Silva the opportunity to take
advantage of the scores at their continued height in 2004. The truly
daunting task for anyone attempting to assemble suites of music from Shore's
trilogy is the massive quantity of quality cues to select from. Certainly,
as anyone who as been enticed by Shore's score knows, the three scores
contain enough enchanting material to fill out at least two full albums. For
the purposes of Silva's
The Lord of the Rings recordings, Fitzpatrick
narrowed the recordings down to 90 minutes and provided the orchestral mixes
of the songs without their vocals (and sometimes with a featured solo
instrument) as an extra bonus.
All of the cues except "The Fellowship" from the first
score and "Gollum's Song" from the second featured a deviation from the
classical arrangement of the orchestra, spreading the violins out between
the two sides of the orchestra for additional depth in the recording.
Shore's music is, of course, very layered and thick, so this arrangement,
along with the usual wet (natural echoing) atmospheric mixing of all of
Prague's recordings causes Shore's compositions to rattle the walls with the
powerful ambience they demand. The ensemble for this set would include 87
orchestral musicians, 100 voices in the choir, and several male and female
vocalists. The selection of cues is strong throughout, with no notable
omissions, although some liberty has been taken with the edits and
arrangements of the cues. So if you've got the cue sheets for the trilogy
memorized, you might encounter two or three changes in direction to allow
Prague the opportunity to round out the album a bit better. Perhaps the only
substantial weakness of the 2-CD set is the short representation of
The
Two Towers, which is arguably the best original composition of the
three. From
Fellowship of the Ring, "The Fellowship" takes the finale
cue and edits it down into a very strong suite. Other cues from the first
score mostly represent the opening sections of the film, but remain intact.
From
The Two Towers, the major themes are accompanied by the two
battle highlights from the end of the film. From
The Return of the
King, the two cues of the "Minas Tirith"/Gondor theme are followed by "Twilight
and Shadow" and one battle cue before tackling the lengthy finale sequence.
That final score cue from
The Return of the King (featuring an
outstanding baritone voice for the king's brief vocals) is cut short,
however, and its end includes an abbreviated performance of "The Fellowship"
from the opening track on the first album. Worthy of a reprise, Prague
handles the "Breaking of the Fellowship" cue well, particularly in the
motivating, drum-backed string performance of that theme.
The songs are perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the
set, with instrumental versions of all three accompanying their appropriate
sections of the album. In the case of "Gollum's Song," the track seems to be
simply the instrumental backing of the vocal version (minus the vocals),
with the rotation of solo duties beginning with (and returning to) a tragic
violin and featuring a beefy performance by brass in the middle section. A
flute replaces the voice in the first rendition of "May it Be" and a very
elegant cello serves as the soloist in "Into the West." On the vocal side,
Tara Scammell's performance of "May It Be" is remarkably Enya-like, perhaps
due to the overlay of the voice several times in mixing (a normal Enya
technique). Helen Hobson's performance of "Gollum's Song" is impressive
given the difficulty of merging the dialogue and singing in that piece, and
her performance of "Into the West" gives us the opportunity to hear someone
less harsh than Annie Lennox provide a fairy-tale ending (though Hobson does
border on getting carried away with herself in her "popified" twists of
note). Overall, you have to applaud all of the efforts that went into this
album, because in order to attain the same depth of Shore's original
compositions, the orchestra, choir, vocal solos, and extensive flute solos
had to all be recorded separately over two months and carefully edited to
the same end as the originals. For any fan of Shore's
The Lord of the
Rings albums --even if you're one of those sorts itching for the release
of expanded albums of the scores-- this Silva/City of Prague Philharmonic
Orchestra is a very entertaining listen. With attention to precision that is
rarely heard in re-recordings these days, this set even eclipses Silva's own
previous recordings of famous trilogies. Don't expect recordings identical
to the originals, but ones certainly worthy of your attention.
****
The insert includes extensive information about the films and a note from the album producer about the recording.
