In Continuum.

I'm not sure if a "Closet Lord of the Rings Fan" is an over or under statement for myself. I mean, it's not like I publicly announce my obsession and fascination with Tolkien's mystical world of Middle Earth, but at the same time it is not like I am very subtle about it either. It is not going to take a genius to notice the giant posters I have in my bedroom, not to mention the glass shelf full of related merchandises. I have everything from extended edition DVDs, to mugs, to calendars, to bookmarks, coasters, lottery tickets, and even the one ring itself. I used to be an avid fan of the books as well as the films, but now I have retreated into the safety of my closet and have thus become a closet fan, and nothing more. It is not because I am ashamed of being a fan of the series, it's just that it's not something that lingers around the edge of my lips these days. Still, if you ask me about how many rings the dwarves got, I'd be able to tell you right off the bat. Or the name of Aragorn's sword before and after it was forged, I can give you the name and the proper pronunciation of the words. Yes, I am in this deep. 

More than just a fan of these little merchandises however, I am a big fan of the score of the film. The film and the score are like siamese brothers, they cannot be separated from each other without one of them failing. The film gave birth to the score, and the score lent its life to the films as well. A part of why I was, and am, so deeply in love with this franchise is because of the moving music, the themes and the melodies weaved through the pages of sheet music is simply amazing to say the very least. Howard Shore has composed a series of music that'd go down in cinematic history as some of the best film scores ever written, and that is an under-statement by itself already. I have listened to the soundtracks so many times that I have memorized every note and pause, how each song begins and the other ends. That is also why when I heard about the Lord of the Rings symphony orchestra coming down to town for a performance, I literally jumped out of my skin with joy. 

When it comes to classical music, you just can't force it down somebody's throat. You cannot drag a friend of yours to a concert like that and expect him or her to enjoy it as much as you. I suppose I am the kind of person who'd rather go alone than to have somebody there who is obviously not going to appreciate the beauty of the score. So I brought my mother along this time, she was my date for the night. My constant listening to the score has turned her into a fan over the years, and even she can hum along to the score whenever I listened to them in the past. Just before the tickets got sold out, I grabbed the last few remaining ones off the internet and set Thursday night free from all obligations and responsibilities. I was ready to revisit the mystical world of Tolkien's all over again, and Howard Shore's music was going to be my vessel in doing so. You wouldn't have known, but I was so excited after school that I must have paced a depression at the foyer outside of our school while waiting for the cab to come. I had the score on repeat in my iPod, just in case I missed a note or two over the past seven years of my hopeless obsession. 

I have had my share of experiences when it comes to attending concerts with classical music. Most of them have been school concerts admittedly, but they were mostly attended to support a friend or two in the ensemble, never really for the music. Once in a while you catch a tune you know, but then it gets a little dry and boring most of the time. It's just the difference in eras I suppose, the way some people find it difficult to like any films in black and white. I have learned to appreciate certain forms of music without the need to like them. The same can be said about dances of any kind, I have come to terms with the fact that I just don't understand what they are doing on stage most of the time. But I do appreciate the kind of effort and hard work they put into their art forms, and that alone is respectable in the highest regards on my part. Anyway, I remember attending a few school concerts and admittedly falling asleep in a few of them. My mother was telling me how she attended a couple of solo violinist concerts, which was some of the most boring concerts she has ever been to in her whole life. So, I was rather worried today, since I expected half the people attending today are going to be people attending for the sake of attending, rather than the music itself. It is probably the truth though, but at least it was a full house when the concert began, and a full house when it ended. 

The orchestra entered from the doors on either side of the concert hall, and they carried the scores and the instruments that they were going to play in their hands. All dressed up in elegant black dresses and handsome three piece suits, they members took their places while the choir members assembled at the back of the orchestra. The Lord of the Rings symphony is made up of the Singapore Festival Orchestra, the Choir of the Slovene National Theatre Opera and Ballet Ljubljana, the Choir of the Slovene National Theatre Opera and Ballet Maribor, and the Singapore Lyric Opera Children's Choir. The conductor, Markus Huber, entered the stage from the side and was received with a long round of applause which he accepted graciously with a low bow on the podium. The orchestra tuned, the audience quietened down, and there was a heavy silence in the air that made my heart skip a beat or two for as long as it lasted. The conductor took a deep breath, the violinists stared intently at his hands, and then they swooped down towards the ground like an eagle which spotted its prey. The orchestra dived into the first song, The Prophecy, and the first note sent chills down my spine for how much it resembled the CD I have been listening to all these years.

Let's just say that I have never experience a concert like the one I attended tonight. Everything was just so majestic, so grand, and so magnificent. Everything from the orchestra, to the instrument arrangements, to the graphics splashed onto the screen in the background of original artworks done by Alan Lee and John Howe, everything was just calibrated to utter perfection. It was exactly like the DVD special I watched a few days ago, the one that came with the box set for the third Lord of the Rings extended edition DVDs. The orchestra moved from one song to the next seamlessly, weaving every song together into a single continuous narrative. It followed the story line faithfully, taking the essence of every song and then emphasizing it to a level that took the breath of the audience away. Listening to the music live was a completely different experience for me, because it was a lot more intense somehow with the expression of the musicians and the intensity of the conductor. The timpani boomed, the drums thundered from the back of the ensemble as the music crashed into the heavy industrial theme of Isengard. The dark landscape of Mordor surfaced in Esplanade tonight, and even Hobbiton came to life on stage with the soft flute in the background accompanied by the delicate yangqin and guitars. Then the chorus joined in, the theme of the elves rang through the walls of the concert hall and into our bones, the voices of the child soloists echoed through the dark spaces. It was magical, truly astounding music in the making.

Ann De Renais took the stage from the third movement, and she carried most of the solo vocals throughout the rest of the concert. She has the most angelic voice there is to hear, and her version of Evenstar was so utterly beautiful that the silence at the end of the song could have been sliced by a plastic knife. Her soprano voice reached a note that was high enough to ring through your ears at a certain frequency, but not nearly enough to irritate. It was almost artificial, her voice, and it was downright beautiful to say the very least. Sure, Annie Lennox did a great job with Into the West, but Ann De Renais certainly had her way with the song. It blew me away, it truly did. If it wasn't for the solemn setting, I would have screamed in hysteria for how amazing the concert was at that point in time. I really would have done that, and I certainly had the urge for doing so. But I didn't want to embarrass my mother, and certainly did not want to be booted out from the concert hall. Besides, they were just about to jump into the music from the third soundtrack, my favorite soundtrack definitely. 

Howard Shore composed over twelve hours of music for the entire trilogy, and a three hour concert simply isn't going to do it any justice. Nonetheless, a shortened score was composed and certain stuff had to be left out. Most of the essential tracks are still in the arrangement, though some of the songs were rudely and abruptly cut off at certain parts that were supposed to be climactic. For example, the Bridge of Khazad-dum really should have followed through with the theme of the fellowship, and the same can be said about the Gondor theme in the White Tree. Still, everything was forgiven as all the instruments and the choir members joined together and gave a tremendous performance for The Fields of the Pelennor, the scene in the film that involved the ringwraiths swooping down on Minas Tirith. Awesome, breath-taking music right there, and the bass and double bass shook me to my bone marrows. The strings! The horns! The trumpets! Everything was just so wholly perfect, it's almost unfair for those who cannot make it. 

It was either the tuba or the trumpet, or maybe the french horns, but one of them screwed up a couple of times throughout the concert. I think the microphone set up for the concertmaster was way too far away as well, and his violin playing thus became a little soft. The irish whistle could have also been amplified a little better actually, but everything else was pretty near perfect I must say. The two child soloists at the beginning were nervous as hell, but I guess they looked too adorable for any of us to be critical. The concert ended with the last note of the soundtrack dragged up to a crescendo, and it remained there for the longest time until the conductor decided to let it go. The note trailed in the air for some time, the conductor rested his hand on an imaginary plane in mid air, and it was the end of it all. The audience exploded into a round of applause, and that was the end of the amazing night that satisfied my geeky love for the Lord of the Rings a hundred times over. It was awesome, brilliant, and all those words you can find in the thesaurus related to those words. A really worthwhile experience for any music and movie lover, and I am glad that this week has ended on such a high and moving note. 

1. The Prophecy

2. Concerning Hobbits

3. The Shadow of the Past

4. A Short Cut to the Mushrooms

5. The Old Forest

6. A Knife In The Dark

7. Many Meetings

8. The Ring Goes South

9. A Journey In The Dark

10. The Bridge of Khazad-dum

11. Lothlorien

12. Gandalf's Lament

13. Farewell to Lorien

14. The Great River

15. The Breaking of the Fellowship

16. Foundations of Stone

17. The Taming of Smeagol

18. The Riders of Rohan

19. The Black Gate is Closed

20. Evenstar

21. The White Rider

22. Treebeard

23. The Forbidden Pool

24. The Hornburg

25. Forth Eorlingas

26. Isengard Unleashed

27. Gollum's Song

28. Hope and Memory

29. The White Tree

30. The Steward of Gondor

31. Cirith Ungol

32. Anduril

33. The Fields of the Pelennor

34. The End of All Things

35. The Return of the King

36. The Grey Havens

37. Into the West