The Chicago Tribune has a review of the show.
I hear from other sources (friend of a friend who plays the French horn) that the orchestra involved in this production is essentially a "pick-up orchestra" -- was that the case with performances in other cities? I wonder how good it would have been with a group that performed together regularly?
Not that I didn't enjoy myself -- because I did. We had box seats -- in the second tier of boxes and were on the right hand side. I could see almost the entire stage and the screen. I actually found the visual component kind of distracting.
The hammer dulcimers sounded awful and there was this percussion instrument that they used during (I think) the Khazad-Dum section that was too dissonent.
Also, I didn't like the soloist for the Lament for Mithrandir.
Otherwise -- the Auditoreum is beautiful, there were 5 bass-viols!! (Or whatever you call-em), we got to hear the Hardanger fiddle, the percussion was mostly great (except for whatever that instrument was.)
The Q&A was good -- there were some v. interesting question.
Overall-- lots of fun.