Howard Shore - The Lord of the Rings Return of the King With Bonus DVD (19 tracks) +Album Reviews

Stunning musical journery in deluxe package

Ryan Harvey | Los Angeles, CA USA | 02/09/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This deluxe edition of the soundtrack to "The Return of the King" has the exact same music as the regular edition, but comes in a beautiful leather package. Casual listeners should save money and buy the regular edition, but Tolkien fans will want this durable, bookshelf beauty instead. (Being a complete Tolkien nut, I bought both.)The third of Howard Shore's soundtrack albums to the "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy is, like the film itself, the best of the best. The albums for both "The Fellowship of the Ring" and "The Two Towers" were superb, stunning orchestral storyscapes that perfectly caught Tolkien's Middle-Earth and were wonderful individual listening experiences on their own, away from the films. The perfect music to read Tolkien by.But this is the big one. This is the masterpiece. This is some of best film music of the last decade. Shore surpasses himself in every way on this score.The new major theme for the score is the Gondor Theme, heard in fullest expression in the inspiring track "The White Tree" (actually, this is the music for the lighting of the beacons of Gondor) and also in "Minas Tirith" and the lonely, sad track "The Steward of Gondor," where Billy Boyd provides a haunting song to accompany a massacre. (Boyd's voice is a real surprise -- he sounds professional).The other themes from the early films return, with Shore adapting them and changing them in surprising ways. You'll thrill to hearing the Rohirrim theme in "The Ride of the Rohirrim" as well as the way the theme introduces the real stand-out track of the album, "The Fields of Pelennor," a masterpiece suite describing various aspects of the battle around Minas Tirith. This track achieves almost a sublime level of action and power (screaming chorus, driving brass, and Shore's characteristic delayed resolution to build suspense) and is the musical highlight of the three albums. (I stood up cheered at the end the first time I heard it, even though I was alone.)"Shelob's Lair" is also an amazing track, filled with jabbing, crazy strings and a sense of rising panic. You can hear the giant spider moving around in the music and it will make you as afraid as Frodo himself was.Shore pounds the story into an orchestral rage for "The End of All Things," which is the story's climax and an overwhelming track of rapidly shifting emotions and explosions of choral fury. It will quite wring you out the same way the movie does at this point.For quieter moments, there are beautiful and inspiring tracks like "Twilight and Shadow" (dealing with Arwen) and the lengthy ten-minute track "The Return of the King," which sums up all the major themes and at last brings us full circle to the sprightly Hobbiton theme first heard back in "The Fellowship of the Ring." Shore ends it all with grace and quiet beauty in the subtle and sad track "The Grey Havens," which uses a theme that had grown throughout the score. This theme then becomes the soft and soulful Annie Lennox song, "Into the West," the perfect conclusion to the album.I've come across few soundtrack albums as well put together as this. Anyone who loves Tolkien, film music, or great orchestral music, MUST buy this album.My only complaint? There's so much more music in the film than they could fit on a single CD. A big deluxe double CD with more of the music would be appreciated in the near future."

Howard Shore - A Brilliant Composer

Antonio Cunha Silva | Stb, Portugal | 07/04/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I love the movies and love the soundtracks also! Howard Shore is a brilliant composer.

I heard that late this year or in 2005 will be released a BoxSet with 9 CDs of the complete LOTR Movies Soundtracks in Extended Editions. It's a box with the complete soundtracks to all the LOTR Trilogy Movies as seen on screen - Theatrical Versions - YES!

It will be 2 CDs for FOTR, 3 for TT and another 3 for ROTK and an extra CD with rarities and unreleased music from the films with commentary from Howard himself!!

What a BIG surprise!"

A bit of a letdown

C. R. Vandenheuvel | Hudsonville, MI United States | 12/15/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"First of all, I am a devoted fan of Shore's work on the LOTR trilogy. I play these in my car all the time. I'm sure most of the people reading this can relate; so you might respond to this score the same way I did.In my opinion, you can't really review a CD like this until you've listened to it 5 or 6 times. It's especially hard if you haven't seen the movie. When I first listened to this score, I actually thought it was quite boring! Now that I'm familiar with it, it's not as boring as I thought, but it still is a bit dull especially when compared to the Two Towers score. I would say it is my least favorite of the three.The problem is that nothing really happens! It's hard to relate to it because most of the thematic material is gone (the Fellowship theme is under-represented, the Frodo/Sam theme appears a bit at the end, the Rohan theme appears one time quite weakly, and Saruman's is gone). We do hear the Gondor theme quite a bit, thankfully. But with so much missing, you need the track list to have any idea what's going on. It does have its strong points. The best part is probably the Mount Doom section, which features a haunting solo by Ms. Fleming, sandwiched by explosive choral sections. The cameos by Pippin and Aragorn are great. And it's neat to hear some more Shire stuff at the end.Annie Lennox's song is OK ... it's a nice tune, but I don't really care for her voice and the lyrics are just a bit fluffy. It's not as good as the other two vocal songs. The part after the credits is a huge letdown. It should have been triumphant, but there's just nothing memorable in it.All three scores have been surprising and unique, and this one is no different. I'm sure it suits the movie perfectly, but taking the disc on its own merits, I just can't help but think it could have been better.A note on the DVD: I really think New Line has dropped the ball here in that across all the DVDs they have released, they don't give Shore enough time to explain why he wrote the music the way he did. This disc had huge potential for that, but all it really is is 25 minutes or so of behind the scenes. You'll get to see what it's like to compose and record music, but unfortunately we don't get inside Shore's head nearly enough. One final thing--the DVD shows a choir recording an powerful vocal version of the Fellowship theme. Why on earth isn't this on the CD?"

This very good score is better served in the film itself

Charles Wilson | Dallas, TX USA | 12/23/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I consider myself a fan of Shore's film scores, especially the Cronenberg pictures and others such as Silence of the Lambs, which highlighted his capacity for oppressive dread. I've also liked the previous two LOTR scores despite some reservations, mostly having to do with his action writing. I had not heard the score for ROTK before seeing the film, and as I watched and listened, I truly felt that his level of inspiration was much higher this time around. From the first notes there is a suppleness and harmonic inventiveness that were frequently missing from the other scores. The first hour and a half of the film contained half a dozen or so quite memorable moments in the score, the most extroverted being the lighting of the beacons that appears here in the cue 'The White Tree.' (About half these moments appear on the cd.) Even the battle music here, normally the great weakness of these scores, had a surprise or two, such as the enormous trolls beating out the rhythms we'd first heard in the first films during the Moria sequence. It's true, though, that Shore's resourcefulness here isn't what it could be and eventually what we get is long stretches of droning and pounding. That said, I have to say that I found Shore's theme for Valinor quite affecting, especially as it's used in the film, first during Pippin and Gandalf's 'eve of battle' talk regarding death as a passage to a 'far shore' (also missing from the cd). The theme appears at intervals when mortality looms, then in the cue here titled 'The Grey Havens' and is finally incorporated as the chorus melody in the Annie Lennox song 'Into the West'. Despite a bit of cheese factor here, I just love the sound of this theme and even the Lennox song. The perfect easeful close to all that has gone before. I doubt I would like this score nearly as much if I'd heard the cd first. Many of the better passages from the complete score are here, but many are (unavoidably) missing, and this is music that works much better when married to the visuals that inspired it. I do listen with pleasure to the cd (most of it) but I would recommend seeing the film and then deciding whether to buy the soundtrack. Apart from John Williams, Shore is about the only composer currently scoring films that could have gotten through three films on this scale without disgracing himself. Goldsmith at one time had both the talent and the temperament, but seems to bring one or the other of those qualities, but not both, to most projects these days. Goldenthal has the technical chops, the lyrical voice, and can write brilliant scherzando action material, but one suspects he would have missed some of the opportunities that Shore takes for emphasizing the more sorrowful, melancholy overtones (and LOTR is a work filled with sorrow and loss). I must admit that I have complete faith that George Fenton could have written a full-scale masterpiece here and filled in all the missing spots that Shore missed, but I have always been partial to the amazingly gifted and accomplished Fenton. Williams? I think he would have given us a towering, self-assured piece that you could almost hear in your head before seeing a single frame of the film ... but ultimately I'm glad we got to hear Shore's take on all this. His talent deserves to be recognized and if the LOTR scores aren't his very best, I do think there is some very fine work here. Overall: B+"

Search - Howard Shore :: The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (With Bonus DVD)

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