The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Complete Recordings Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		5.0

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Complete Recordings Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 2, 2018

If Rhino’s release schedule of late is any indication, there must still be considerable interest in the Shire, or at least the Shore. Howard Shore’s scores for The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy set a new standard for film music, and several editions of his fantastic contributions to all three films have been released over the years. Rhino brought out a “new” Blu-ray audio release a few months ago of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - The Complete Recordings, and now they’ve followed suit with another handsomely packaged edition that presents Shore’s score for the second film in the trilogy, The Two Towers.

Sometimes "the second child" in a vaunted film trilogy gets the short shrift somehow, but Shore's score for this film takes many of the elements from the first film and magnifies them, as well as introducing new themes and motifs that are really brilliantly interwoven into the overall tapestry. Shore's attention to detail shines through everything from gargantuan orchestral moments to quieter tracks that play almost like parlor music from a long ago dream.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Complete Recordings Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

There's no real video element to the Blu-ray disc, other than a static menu that offers all of tracks. It's actually not even necessary to have a monitor of any kind engaged to enjoy this release, since it plays more or less like a CD, with the tracks being accessible via your remote, and toggling between the two audio codecs accessible either through the audio button on your remote or the colored buttons (there's a key on the static menu for that aspect which shows pressing red is for DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and pressing yellow is for DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0, which may be the one reason to need to see it). As with the first release, I noticed a tiny and probably inconsequential (to most, anyway) authoring error on the disc with regard to a check mark next to whichever track is chosen. It turns out using the audio button does not move the check mark, only pressing the colored buttons does. Also, I noticed a member posted about having a problem with the Menu not displaying properly on The Fellowship of the Ring, and while I never encountered an anomaly with that release, I did experience a kind of weird glitch (if it can even be called that) when I inserted this disc in my player and for a moment just the track listing showed against a black background. In a second or two, the blue backing map finally appeared as an underlay. (This has happened every time I've started the disc.)

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Complete Recordings Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings — The Complete Recordings features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks, both 48 kHz 24 bit. As I indicated in our The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - The Complete Recordings Blu-ray review , there is some pretty fascinating technical discussion in our forum devoted to that release which is also probably applicable to this one that I'll refer interested readers to. As I joked in the first review in this "series", since I left my spectrogram in the Shire, I had to use those old fashioned tools called my ears to assess what I was hearing. This is another listening experience that I would be hard pressed to really differentiate from the DVD audio version, though, again, there is arguably a somewhat (if incremental) fuller sound to the lower registers here. Even if there is not a substantial difference between this and the DVD version, this is another awesome sounding release that offers sterling fidelity and which handles the huge leaps in dynamic range that Shore's impressive score provides with absolute ease. There is really remarkable clarity in everything from gigantic, even Mahlerian, orchestral forces, to some of the really quiet and touching lyrical tracks (or parts of tracks) that tend to sound a bit more like "world" music with ethnic sounding instruments.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Complete Recordings Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

While there are no supplements per se on the Blu-ray audio disc, this is a very handsomely packaged release, as can be seen in the pictures I've uploaded to the review. While some may wonder about the inclusion of the CDs, they're at least an alternative method for listening. The real allure here for music geeks (like yours truly) is the nicely written and very informative booklet, which includes little snippets of notation from the score.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Complete Recordings Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As I mentioned with regard to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - The Complete Recordings, I'm not sure fans really need to double dip here if they purchased the previous version, since a lot about this outing is more or less identical to the first release. That said, for those who haven't yet sprung for the "complete" soundtracks, this is another stunning listen that provides a really superb experience that not only evokes the film, but which fires the imagination in general. Highly recommended.