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| Listener Rating |
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| 468 listener votes for this album. |
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| One Soundtrack to Rule Them All |
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| By: | Ghostkeeper |
| Date: | 29 Jun 2010 |
| Rating: |
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Reviewing any of the Lord of the Rings albums is a daunting task. They are so immensely popular, and there is a lot to write about. No piece of text can possibly capture the pure beauty of these soundtracks, but let this be a futile attempt. It will be lengthy.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (The Complete Recordings) is a deluxe set of 4 audio CD's with nearly four hours of music (the other two soundtracks of the Lord of the Rings had only three discs) and a bonus DVD with high-definition 48kH 5.1 surround-sound audio. It includes nearly all the music that was recorded for the movie. Most of the trilogy is played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which went to extreme lengths for performing this extraordinary composition. The third of the movies won three awards for its soundtrack: The Academy Award for Best Original Score, the Academy Award for Best Original Song (Into the West) and the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack. These are considered the best of Howard Shore's compositions and made him very, very famous. The Lord of the Rings is seen by many as the best soundtrack of the new millennium, and it rivals with Star Wars here on SST.
Most of the Lord of the Rings is operatic and tense music. It is very emotional (except The Green Dragon perhaps) and really enhances the experience of the movie. Many of the true Lord of the Rings zealots out there, like myself, will recognize some of the scenes while listening to the score, and be touched again by the drama of Tolkien's work. The emotion of the story is echoed in the music itself very well. It has a story of its own. I will highlight some of the tracks as examples of this.
Roots and Beginnings, the first track, starts immediately with the magical theme of the Lord of the Rings by which you can picture a black screen with the title glowing up. It is only a glimpse though, because the Hobbits go fishing with a happy flute melody in the background and some other innocent woodwinds. Then, when the ring is found, after two minutes, you can hear the Ring's famous theme in a violin. The track then gets more rough as Smeagol and Deagol fight over it.
For the purpose of keeping this review shorter we'll skip ahead to Flight from Edoras (track 11). Here is where Sauron shows to the good guys his intention of attacking Minas Tirith through the Palantír and Pippin has to join Gandalf on Shadowfax to Gondor. The beauty is where Merry runs up the tower to see Pippin ride away. It lives up, with high strings, to capture his great pains at seperating from his best buddy.
The first disc ends with the often-favorited track "The Lighting of the Beacons" (track 15). Hope is truly kindled with two special moments in this track. Of course, where this track is so famous for, is the actual lighting of the Beacons of Minas Tirith. During the impressive mountain views in the movie, Shore gets precious time to turn the viewer's attention to the music and uses this extremely well. This is possibly the highest musical moment of the entire trilogy. Fast, high strings and strong brass make this part of the soundtrack so memorable. A great building up to the final exploding of Gondor's theme, where still those high strings act as a secondary melody. But it doesn't end there, because towards the end comes a piece of powerful low percussion that makes one think of the Last March of the Ents in the second volume.
On the second disc rests "Allegiance to Denethor" (track 3), portraying the scene where Faramir asks his father if he would have wanted him to have died in stead of his brother. This sad and highly emotional scene is reflected by the soundtrack. A humble panflute is the perfect choice. This piece aims right for the heart. The panflute is heard in the next track as well, but in a less emotional way.
The third disc (a disc of many battle scenes) contains "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields" (track 4), my favorite of this soundtrack. It has an intense buildup during which King Theoden holds his speech ("Deaaath!!!"), which is eventually unleashed in the most beautiful theme, the violin theme of Rohan, as the Rohirrim cascade down upon the legions of orcs on the Pelennor Fields in all their glory.
Then the Mouth of Sauron (track 15), much later in the story, is where that ugly creature with the large grinning mouth shows Frodo's posessions to Aragorn and co. The beauty of this track is the mix of dark, evil pieces, and the bright glimpses of hope where Sir James Galway the flutist plays a bright melody while Frodo finds his energy to climb up the volcano, while Sam remembers the green Shire and Frodo doesn't (7:14), while Samwise the Brave carries his friend entirely in stead of just the Ring.
The fourth disc has the music of the extremely long (justified of course) ending scenes of the Lord of the Rings. The Ring has been destroyed and the world is at peace. A highlight in the track "The Fellowship Reunited" (track 4) is where Aragorn sees Arwen and that unforgettable shot of happy tears where Elrond watches his daughter approach her love, imprinted so well in Howard's composition.
"Elanor" (track 6), named after one of Sam's sons, is played during the ending of the movie. Sir James Galway again plays his flute to transfer that happy, complete feeling to the viewers when "The End" is written on the screen. After that, the next two tracks play during the credits roll of which the final one exclusively on the extended edition of the movie with the fan club names rolling down endlessly.
I had to cut a lot of highlights in my notes to make this review digestible still, like "Andúril, Flame of the West", "The Grace of Undómiel", "The Houses of Healing" and "For Frodo". All in all, the Lord of the Rings soundtrack trilogy is rich and infinitely listenable. Literally, for days on end have I listened to it. The soundtrack is good still long after the movie itself has become repetitive from watching it so often. Request it as often as you can; people will love you for it and your ears will delight in it.
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