Concert Report

2015年4月12日，星期日，就在这一天，我参加了我有史以来感觉最棒的音乐会—《指环王》音乐会. 这是一个演奏电影《指环王III—国王归来》的管弦乐团，伴随着电影声音的影响，效果非常好。这篇文章就是我参加音乐会的所见所闻之感想了。

On Sunday, April 12, 2015, I attended the best concert I’ve ever been to in my entire life- The Lord of the Rings in Concert. It was a live orchestra playing live music of the 3rd Lord of the Rings movie, the Return of the King, with the film playing in the back with voice tracks. It was the most amazing concert I have ever been to.

The concert began at 3:30 in the afternoon in Lincoln Center in New York city. As I took a seat, the orchestra and the choir walked on stage in applause. The musicians on stage consist of 21st Century Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. The conductor, Ludwig Wicki, followed after the orchestra and bowed to the audience.

As the concert began, the movie started to play on a huge screen behind the orchestra. I was about to burst into tears as I heard the familiar theme of the ring. The conductor had his eyes fixed on the screen in order to match the music with the scenes, while the orchestra and the choir could not see the screen. I had watched the movie many times before (in fact a lot of the audiences were Lord of the Ring fan nerds, some of them even dressed up as the characters), and if I close my eyes it sounds exactly the same as the movie. However, live music brings power and magic to the atmosphere, that although most eyes were fixed on the screen, the audiences were 100 times more active and passionate than that of a movie theatre- huge applause and cheering after every happy scene, etc. It was almost like watching a live theatre show. It seemed like the live music made us forget that the movie wasn’t real, and the characters weren’t actually there.

There were two solo singers among the musicians on stage. One little boy was standing in front of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. He was no older than the age of 11 or 12 but he had the pure and beautiful voice of an angel. The audiences gave him the biggest applauses after every one of his solos. The soprano, Kaitlyn Lusk, was sitting in the middle of the orchestra instead of the choir, and only stood up when she had solos. Her had an amazingly range allowing her to hit high and low notes with the same timbre. Although being an adult, her voice was no less pure than that of the little boy, at some point I almost felt like it wasn’t human voice because the pitch was all that is left- in the most beautiful way. I would love to hear her again.

I was impressed with how the conductor perfectly synced the music with the movie. I was able to tell that the movie has been edited and some unimportant scenes have been cut in order to save time, and, possibly, to save some strength for the musicians on stage. But even after editing, the concert still took more than 3 hours. I cannot imagine how many times the conductor must have practiced and rehearsed along with the movie.

A big surprise even better than the concert was, at the end of the concert where audiences were cheering like crazy, an old man walked out from the side of the stage with the conductor- Howard Shore, the composer of all music in Lord of the Rings, showed up himself. He gave a short speech thanking the audiences for their support over the years for Lord of the Rings, and for their support for music in this world.

At the end of the report I’d also like to describe the music hall- Lincoln Center is definitely one of the best music halls I’ve ever been to. I expected it to be huge but was still shocked to see the inside. There were 6 floors inside of the concert hall, some of them being private cabins, some of them being cheaper seats. Because of the height the ceiling was hard to see, but an enormous light hangs from all the way up to almost the third floor. (I’m not really sure how it doesn’t cover the views of some audiences) The walls were made from special material to give the best sound quality. And, very unnoticeably, countless electronic concert devices were placed everywhere, like cameras, stereos and recorders. The stereos were almost everywhere, providing clear and balanced sounds for every single audience.

I was excited for days after this concert and I regret not seeing the two other ones before this one. This concert alone made my trip to New York entirely worthy.