On Saturday, Victoria and I went to see Howard Shore direct his work, “The Lord of the Rings”, as performed by the Cleveland Orchestra in Severance hall. In a nutshell, it was a sub-par performance that had it’s moments. The balance was completely off - the strings were overplaying while the choir sounded underpowered. There were some serious tonality problems in the choir (people were cringing in the audience) and there were a number of missed entrances from nearly every section in the orchestra. I was very surprised. I honestly have never been to a Cleveland Orchestra concert that didn’t blow me away, but I suppose there is a first for everything.

While the whole wasn’t impressive, the sum of the parts made the evening worthwhile. If there was just one section that earned its keep for the evening, it was the brass section. As Howard Shore led them into the depths of Mordor, the tubas and trombones wailed as the percussion beat their 2-3 rhythm. In fact, just about any part that called for fortisimo was pretty good.

Kaitlyn Lusk, the sixteen year old soloist that sang during the second half, was quite good. I was most impressed with her angelic voice drifting over the orchestra. She also sang solos to songs that I’m pretty sure I never heard in the movie. I’m not quite sure what that was about.