A friend and I went to see the Night in Fantasia: Symphonic Games Edition orchestral performance of video game scores the other night at Sydney Town Hall, having seen the Eminence orchestra at the Sydney Conservatorium last December for their “Passion“ performance. Eminence are a group of Con kids who are obviously avid video game and Anime fans, and state they established the ensemble to introduce gamers to the world of classical music. Their Passion show was a sampler of such work, including selections from both video game and Anime scores, as well as Brahms’ ‘Hungarian Dance’ and Saint-Saëns’ ‘Danse Macabre’. Not being as avid a fan of Anime as some, I was particularly eager to see that they had split their popular Night in Fantasia show into dedicated games and Anime shows.
As with the Passion show several of the game scores featured were from Japanese games never unreleased in the Western world, let alone little old Australia. The organisers’ obvious fetish for performing music from the Chrono (Trigger) series may be due to an intention to educate us to virtues of the game, which is fine, but I’d say I’m not alone in the audience for wanting to hear music from the games they know and love performed by a large symphony. The popularity of their John Williams show alone is testament to their audiences’ love of something familiar. Even when the scores were from games familiar to Australians, often more obscure pieces were chosen (I don’t think I recognised a single part of their World of Warcraft medley).
This orchestra was much larger than the Con show, and featured a choir and use of the Town Hall pipe organ (*bliss!*) although, while I’m not sure how much of the concert hall is acoustic and how much is amplified, there seemed to a problem with the organ being drowned out by the other instruments. It was also nice to see a screen behind the orchestra that played clips from the games the scores were in. As with previous performances the evening’s guests included several video game composers from Japan, and this is possibly the source of my criticism. Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s terrific that they’d come all the way out here and, in some cases, take part in performing their work; and the people from Eminence are hardly obscure fanboys. Their eminence (sorry, I couldn’t resist) has seen them chosen to perform the soundtrack to the new Anime series Romeo X Juliet.
The problem arises from the fact that their presence seems to dictate in part the choices for the set list. It seems almost as if in order to honour each guest 2 or 3 pieces of games they’ve worked on are performed and, when you’ve got 7 guests as there was the other night, that’s pretty much the whole show. As there was no pen on hand I didn’t get a chance to fill out a feedback form this time (yes, you can’t even escape them during a night at the symphony), but if I’d had the chance I’d have drawn attention to this. There’s also the fact that while they pretty much kept to what was on the original promotional poster, I’m sure I saw a newer one at Kinokuniya that claimed Matt Uelmen (of Diablo and Burning Crusade fame) was going to be present. He wasn’t. *sigh*
All in all I probably won’t be rushing out for tickets to the next Eminence night, although that has more to do with a lack of variety extending to things familiar to me than any question of quality. The orchestra is skilled and professional; they just might benefit from a little more variety. I hear it’s the spice of life.