Event info

The lord of the rings: the TWO TOWERS

Prime seats ISK 16.990
A zone ISK 13.990
B zone ISK 10.990
C zone ISK 8.990 
D zone ISK 5.990 (limited view on screen, up to 20% off)

Composer Howard Shore’s score to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring introduced audiences to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth and its resident cultures. In the saga’s second chapter, The Two Towers, the world has darkened, cloaked beneath the advancing shadow of Mordor and the threat of the evil One Ring.

The Two Towers opens with the Fellowship of the Ring broken three ways. Yet even as the band is pulled apart, Middle-earth’s cultures begin drawing together. So begins the gradual commingling of civilizations, as neatly compartmentalized social structures are dissolved, cultural strata are folded inwards and the free people of Middle-earth respond to the growing power of Mordor. The Two Towers’ score presents a more complex musical world than The Fellowship of the Ring. “The Fellowship of the Ring ends with the breaking of the Fellowship,” says Shore. “The Two Towers follows the fragments—the shards of the Fellowship. Three distinct stories are being told linearly now.”

In The Two Towers Shore develops the themes introduced in The Fellowship of the Ring and debuts figures for new cultures and characters—but it is the strengthening relationships within the amassed material that illustrates the increasingly entangled plight of Middle-earth. The Shire’s themes, for example, are carried by Merry and Pippin into Fangorn Forest, where they mix with the austere music of the tree-herding Ents. The Ents relate to the cleansing waves of the Nature’s Reclamation theme, the purity of which is embodied in the voice of a boy soprano—the same vocal sound with which the Seduction of the Ring lures its victims. The One Ring’s principle motif, the History of the Ring, mixes with the Pity of Gollum as the wretched, obsessive creature leads Sam and Frodo—and his Precious—ever closer to Mordor. Sauron’s arsenal of material looms on the horizon, flaring and rearing up behind the blunt pestle of the Isengard music, which sprawls across Middle-earth’s plains, assailing the new Rohan Fanfare. The nobly braided Rohan music, in turn, finds an impressive ally: the Fellowship theme, now representing a reduced coalition of Man, Elf, Dwarf and Wizard. And so the connections continue, worlds of musical material circling and intertwining to create a vast ring of related themes. Across the grey slopes of Middle-earth, dusk deepens…

-Doug Adams

Doug Adams is a Chicago-based musician and writer. He is the author of The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films.
Howard Shore, Composer

Howard Shore is one of today’s premier composers whose music is performed in concert halls around the world by the most prestigious orchestras and is heard in cinemas across the globe.

Shore’s musical interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s imaginative world of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, as portrayed in the films directed by Peter Jackson, have enthralled people of all generations for years. This work stands as his most acclaimed composition to date awarding him with three Academy Awards, four Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes as well as numerous critic’s and festival awards.

He is an Officier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la France and has also been recognized by Canada with the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award. The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures honored Howard Shore with an award for Career Achievement for Music Composition and the City of Vienna bestowed him with the Max Steiner Award. Shore has received numerous other awards for his career achievements.

Perhaps most notable from his early career, Shore was one of the creators of Saturday Night Live and served as musical director from 1975 - 1980.  At the same time he began collaborating with David Cronenberg and has since scored 15 of the director’s films, including The Fly, Crash, and Naked Lunch. He was awarded Canadian Screen Awards for Maps to the Stars for score and Cosmopolis for both score and song. His original scores to A Dangerous Method, Eastern Promises and Dead Ringers were each honoured with a Genie Award. Shore continues to distinguish himself with a wide range of projects, from Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, The Departed, The Aviator (for which he won his third Golden Globe Award) and Gangs of New York to Ed Wood, Se7en, The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, Mrs. Doubtfire and his most recent score for Tom McCarthy’s Academy Award-winning Film Spotlight. 

Other recent works include the piano concerto Ruin and Memory for Lang Lang (2010), the song cycle A Palace Upon the Ruins featuring mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano (2014), a cello concerto Mythic Gardens featuring Sophie Shao (2012), and Fanfare for the Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia (2008).

His opera, The Fly (2008), which premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and at Los Angeles Opera, recently completed a successful run in Germany at Theatre Trier.