London Soundtrack Festival 2025 – Howard Shore – SPECIAL ARTICLE

The London Soundtrack Festival celebrated its 1st edition on 19-26 March 2025, having Howard Shore as its main guest, receiving the inaugural London Soundtrack Festival Inspiration Award.

Our friend and collaborator Benoit Daldin was there and offers us this exclusive article for SoundTrackFest.

 

 

The London Soundtrack Festival, in a word: Royal

The first edition of the London Soundtrack Festival clearly demonstrates international ambitions for an event devoted exclusively to music for film. Whether for film, series or video games, the aim of musical director Tommy Pearsons is clear: to enable the public to (re)discover, in concert or cine-concert, famous and rarer scores from this repertoire.

 

For the first edition, the program is impressive: a tribute to Howard Shore, in his presence, a concert of film songs and film music, screenings of the complete The Lord of the Rings, a movie-concert of The Silence of the Lambs, meetings, masterclasses, a concert of video game music, a focus on Hildur Guðnadóttir… In short, an ideal program for all fans of this repertoire.

 

The festival’s other strong point is that it presents this music with some of London’s finest ensembles and musicians: London Philharmonic Orchestra, Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, BBC Concert Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Contemporary Orchestra, Ben Palmer, Neil Tennant, Richard Harwood, Anne Dudley…

 

It has to be said that our British friends have often looked at this repertoire for what it is, without pre-established judgement by the medium it illustrates, but for its own musical qualities, and the great London orchestras have always recorded with the greatest composers, from Bernard Herrmann to John Williams, not forgetting James Horner and Howard Shore, who, at an exceptional Gala concert on March 22, 2025, was reunited with his beloved London Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he recorded the three “The Lord of the Rings” films and his psychedelic score for Cronenberg’s “The Naked Lunch”.

 

The tribute to Howard Shore, the highlight of the festival, consisted of 3 screenings: Crash and Dead Ringers presented by Shore and Cronenberg, and the complete trilogy of “The Lord of the Rings” with an introduction by the composer, “The Silence of the Lambs” cine-concert with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Ben Palmer, again in the presence of Howard Shore, a cross-conference between Shore and Cronenberg and a Gala concert with the LPO again conducted by Ben Palmer.

 

 

The Gala concert was memorable in more ways than one: the first part of the concert featured emblematic scores by the festival’s guest composers. Anna Meredith and her Nautilus (from Eighth Grade), with its powerful brass chords, the meditative excerpt from the score of “Tàr” by Hildur Gudnadottir, Stephen Barton‘s suite from “Picard”, a fine tribute to the music of the “Star Trek” series and films. Ben Palmer conducts with aplomb and expressiveness a London Philharmonic Orchestra of the highest caliber, which also works wonders in Anne Dudley‘s dark and sometimes emphatic music for the chilling thriller “American History X”.

 

The audience then discovers a young composer in the person of Lauren Finch, whose piece presented this evening deserves to follow the development of her career. The concert continues with a delightful medley of game show themes arranged by the excellent Iain Farrington, followed by a superb, colorful and contrasting score written by Natalie Holt for the Loki series.

 

The first part ends with a change of conductor: Ben Palmer hands over his baton to Harry Gregson-Williams, who conducts a suite of music for Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II. The music is obviously Zimmerian (a little too much so at times), but is a well-deserved hit with the public.

 

Of course, the second half of the evening is entirely devoted to Howard Shore‘s career. The composer is there, seated alongside his friend David Cronenberg, and already this vision makes the evening unique. The richness of his inspiration, the diversity of his film collaborations; from his faithful friend David Cronenberg, with whom he signed almost all the scores for his films, to Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogy, via David Fincher (Seven), Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs), Martin Scorsese (Aviator) and Tim Burton (Ed Wood), Shore’s career is impressive. Above all, it is marked by an incredible diversity of styles, with Shore equally at home with large symphony orchestras, electronic music and jazz, never hesitating to experiment rather than settle comfortably into a single approach. Tonight’s concert, obviously very much focused on his symphonic output, and for good reason, nonetheless offers a glimpse of the Canadian composer’s incredible abundance of ideas.

 

From the powerful score of Cronenberg’s masterpiece “The Fly”, whose themes and developments perfectly foretell the horror of metamorphosis and broken love, to iconic excerpts from “The Lord of the Rings”, this cleverly constructed program presents a fascinating mix of his great scores. The sibling relationship of the twins from “Dead Ringers” and its deceptively tranquil theme precedes the delirious opening of Tim Burton’s “Ed Wood”, with its iconic theremin, a superb sonic counterpart to the eccentricity of the film’s main character. This is followed by “Aviator” and one of Shore’s finest scores, written for these impressive aeronautical test scenes filmed by a Scorsese in a great moment, followed by the lyrical theme with oriental accents from “M. Butterfly”.

 

And how can we not mention Tolkien when paying such a tribute to Howard Shore? “The Hobbit” begins with the ethereal theme of ‘the Noble Wood’ and then, of course, a sequel to ‘The Lord of the Rings’, with an introduction by Gandalf himself, Sir Ian McKellen. This score, which has become one of the most played and celebrated in cinema history, is still a pleasure to listen to, with its many leitmotifs, contrasting moods, and subtle orchestrations. A fine tribute, paid to him by David Cronenberg himself, at the end of the concert.

 

In any case, this first edition of the London Soundtrack Festival is more than promising, and really makes you want to follow this new adventure in music-to-picture concerts very closely.

 

 

Article by Benoit Daldin

Pictures by Benoit Daldin & London Soundtrack Festival