The marriage of music and cinema has always been a recipe for success, but if it is also a classic among blockbusters and the soundtrack is provided by the mythical composer Howard Shore, the show organized by Concert Studio is more than guaranteed.
Shore conducted the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the world premiere of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Symphony in Wellington, where the trilogy was filmed over eight years. It was 2003 and the films had already been a success with the public and critics. Since then the program on Tolkien’s work made into a film by director Peter Jackson has added more than 500 performances by orchestras.
But why are shows that include a film and a live concert so successful? The ‘boom’ of the phenomenon gives us some clues, but there are other explanations.
📽️Large format
The experience of sharing with hundreds of people the viewing of a classic film, reliving the emotion of the premiere, is unique. From television to home video to streaming, watching a movie at home with the family has brought us very close to the cinema, but a part of the emotions of the seventh art are closely related to big screens (and that of Sant Jordi will be gigantic) and rooms full of spectators, in the dark, in a form of community ritual. Viewers can thrill to the action and plot highlights and share them with their seatmates, similar to the climate generated by music festivals and pop concerts.
🎞️Catalog
The films that are chosen for the cinema with orchestra formula are not chosen at random. These are classics of film history, although the films of the eighties and nineties are the ones that are programmed the most. The secret of these cult films is highly linked to their splendid soundtrack, in such a way that a few notes of music transport you to the atmosphere of the narration.
From ‘Jaws’ to ‘Star Wars’, going through the Harry Potter saga and the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies, all of them were unbeatable at the box office and different generations have enjoyed them in their anniversary passes, either with nostalgia or as a discovery. TOSome of these productions are also updated with technology or with extended versions based on scenes shot and not included in the original footage.
📽️ ‘Cosplay’ and ‘photocall’
To amplify the experience, many of the concerts with a film include a ‘photocall’ at the entrance with motifs that allude to the show, sometimes with people dressed as the characters, and there are even spectators who join in the most typical cosplay fashion of attendees of a manga salon or a fan convention. The ‘merchandising’, from t-shirts to records and cds of the orchestra that plays, is also very present, raffles are also frequent. The show thus seeks to add emotions and surprises.
🎹 Music enjoyment
the soundtracks are generally classical, atmospheric, and are deeply rooted in the story you see on the screen: there are leitmotifs for characters and places, which are enhanced in a live performance with an orchestra: the prominence of the music makes you enjoy the film with a new layer of understanding of the story, and vibrate at the climactic moments in a way that a viewing of the same film with recorded music does not.
“If you’ve ever watched part of a silent movie, you know that without music, scary scenes aren’t that scary and happy endings aren’t that happy“, points out the Houston Symphony, one of the most prestigious that gives scope to soundtracks in its repertoire. “A live orchestra can take the emotional impact of a film to a whole new level.making the suspenseful scenes terrifying, the sad moments heartbreaking and the victories of our protagonists truly exultant& rdquor;’, he recalls.
The Houston Symphony attributes the revival of the live orchestra phenomenon in the last decade to the great quality of the composers, especially figures like John Williams. Although the show has some of the magic of the first silent movies, accompanied by piano, it is the evocative talent of composers like Williams or Hans Zimmer or Howard Shore himself, those who have the most to do with the secret of success.
Conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos, who has conducted orchestras accompanying Harry Potter-inspired films, particularly admires John Williams for his way of creating tension at just the right moment in the plot and chiseling the story and its characters with music.
🎻Specialized orchestras
In the United Kingdom, the Southbank Center has been presenting an exclusive program of films with live orchestral accompaniment since 2010, from ‘Taxi Driver’ to ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, which has been so successful that it has led them to organize tours of festivals and cities around the world with their cultural proposal. Also the Royal Albert Hall in London has a stable program of concerts with orchestra, in this edition it will project from ‘Black Panther’ to ‘Wonder Woman‘ going through the essential ‘The Two Towers’, one of the films in the Peter Jackson trilogy.
Related news
In Spain, L’Auditori de Barcelona has programmed films with orchestra in recent years around Christmas, such as ‘Gladiator’ or ‘Up’ by Pixar, but it is the concerts without film, a compilation of suites by well-known orchestras such as the Film Symphony Orchestra conducted by Constantino Martínez-Orts, which have offered the most performances in recent years.
This week’s initiative of Concert Studio in Barcelona at the Palau Sant Jordi of the high-definition giant screen projection of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ will move this October to Madrid, at the Wizinc center.