Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Justin Freer

Royal Albert Hall, November 2, 2019

The fourth instalment in the Harry Potter Franchise gets the live orchestra treatment as part of the Royal Albert Hall’s Films in Concert series.

It’s nearly a year since I wrote this piece on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for a series leading up to the release of The Crimes of Grindelwald, and whereas I stand by everything I said there, what struck me watching this film again was just how uncomfortably close to real life elements of it felt. Masked thugs making their violent way through a crowd of unsuspecting bystanders at a sporting event. A general atmosphere of fear and intimidation brewed by a small group of malcontents. A demagogue rising in prominence and an establishment apparently powerless to stop him. Yes, this film is starting to feel all too prescient indeed.

Conducted by Justin Freer, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra did a superb job of providing the live soundtrack to the events on screen. Patrick Doyle’s score is one which rarely references the work of predecessor Williams, save for brief refrains of Hedwig’s Theme here and there, and is a somewhat darker, more eclectic beast than its predecessors, in keeping with the tone of the movie itself.

What never ceases to amaze me in these showings is how easy it is to get caught up in the movie and almost forget that there’s a full orchestra in front of you. To say so might seem disrespectful to or even dismissive of the talents of the men and women playing before you, but in facts is the exact opposite. Consider a room the size of the Royal Albert Hall, a stage front and centre filled with musicians, and a screen behind them with the film running with subtitles, and yet somehow the playing is so seamless, so absolutely in synch with the images, that you just find yourself drawn in, the musicians themselves a mere background detail as their music swells around you in triumphant or climactic sections, and then dwindles to an undercurrent in quieter moments.

Certainly a film like this, with its tendency for silence leading to moments of high drama and vice versa, must be a technical challenge, and that’s before one considers the enormous and sudden tonal shifts of the score such as during The Quidditch World Cup, the jaunty Celtic stylings of the Irish theme suddenly giving way to the harsher, thumping rumble of the Bulgarian one. It’s a challenge the orchestra mastered perfectly, and another triumph for this ongoing series by the Royal Albert Hall.

Verdict: A film which seems more prescient than ever backed up by a score executed to perfection by the orchestra – a magical experience indeed. 9/10

Greg D. Smith