There and back again

With retrospectives on album and in concert this month, Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore reflects on his years in Middle-earth and tells Michael Beek why he has a lot to thank the LPO for...

- Michael Beek

I last met Howard Shore in 2006 when I had the pleasure of sitting with him for a performance of his Lord of the Rings Symphony in Nice, France. Our latest encounter, 18-plus years later, is on Zoom and it finds the 78-year-old Canadian composer in the midst of looking back at his career, archiving and cataloguing his many works and looking forward to the release of Anthology, a double album of his film music coming this month from Deutsche Grammophon.

That recording, made over a three-day celebration last year by the Philharmonique de Radio France (conducted by Ludwig Wicki and Bastien Stil) and Le Balcon (conducted by Mike Schäperclaus) is a distillation of a career on screen that began in 1978 with the ‘video nasty’ I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses. The following year he scored The Brood for director David Cronenberg, a horror film that sparked a fruitful artistic partnership; indeed over 40 years and 17 films later, the pair are still at it – their latest, The Shrouds, is also out this month.

‘It has always been very intuitive with David,’ Shore tells me. ‘As soon as he finishes a script he lets me read it, and we talk about different ways to produce the film. As he’s shooting, I visit him and we discuss ideas. We’ve been working together for so long that I understand his ideas and I think I represent them well, musically.’

Those ideas birthed iconic films such as Dead Ringers, Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly, Shore appearing to revel in Cronenberg’s dark corners. He was inspired to create thrilling, beautiful and uncompromising music to bridge and bolster the director’s celluloid shadows and sinews.

Beyond Cronenberg, Shore has enjoyed repeat collaborations with directors Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Hugo), David Fincher (Seven, The Game, Panic Room