The Lord of the Rings Symphony, Royal Albert Hall, London

All hail the other Ring cycle

For anyone unenthused by the tweeness and weird messianic undertones of Tolkien's magnum opus and Peter Jackson's film trilogy, Thursday night's orchestral performance of The Lord of the Rings trilogy was not the occasion to cast aspersions. Before the concert, adult members of the audience were spotted wearing hobbit capes and sporting mock-ups of the ring. There was a strange atmosphere in the Albert Hall.

With the feeling that we were as likely to witness a Civil War re-enactment as a piece of classical music, we took our seats. At the back of the orchestra, a huge screen had been erected, on which, one assumed, parts of the film trilogy would be shown while the band played. A murmur went round the room - for some of the audience, it would, after all, be the 436th opportunity to see the battle at Helm's Deep. That dream was not to be realised, though, as became apparent when the first images appeared - sketchy illustrations showing icons and impressions from the Tolkien stories. Were they original book illustrations or story-boards for the film? Either way, they lent a slightly cheap quality to what could have been an impressive visual spectacle.

When the chatter died down, Howard Shore, the scorer of the films and, curiously, once the musical director for Saturday Night Live, made his way to the podium, to rapturous applause. Then again, someone sneezed just after the interval to rapturous applause. One sensed it was an audience determined to enjoy itself.

The first half was a journey through The Fellowship of the Ring, the first film, in which, naturally, Shore establishes the motifs that will run throughout the trilogy. The Celtic tones of the Shire's theme sounded uncomfortably like "My Heart Will Go On", the Titanic film theme, but there were moments in The Fellowship that were simply breathtaking, particularly when the Orc-ish grunts of the men's choir competed with discordant brass and piercing strings at moments of high drama. And then the evil melted away, the strings played Mahlerian unison melodies, and everyone felt like they were watching E.T. again.

So much for The Fellowship; The Two Towers and Return of the King provided more interesting fare. The Wagnerian use of leitmotif was toned down a little, and themes intertwined a little less obviously than in the first film. There was also some controlled and strangely moving singing from the London Oratory Schola Choristers, all trebles, who provided an eerie underscore against which the orchestra blasted.

"Gollum's Theme" and "Into the West" were sung by a solo soprano more in the style of Les Misérables than anything else. The sight of an 80-piece orchestra turning into an acoustic guitar is an extraordinary one, but that is how the orchestral arrangement of the soprano solos functioned. For all the skilful arrangement, those moments highlighted the incongruity of playing pop songs in the middle of a classical concert.

The maestro's hands went up for the final time, the house rose to its feet as one, and 95 per cent of the audience went home happy. I was left wondering why it was called a symphony. It was about two hours of music, and there are three films, which could be taken as movements, but this was a greatest-hits package, albeit a well-delivered one. It was pure Hollywood gloss on the part of the marketing team, wholly consistent with an altogether odd evening but one with moments of clarity and dynamism that could break the stoniest of hearts. Film scores are designed to make you feel - and this is one of the very best.