I went. It was pretty good. There's a sort of odd identity problem the concert has since the main 4 composers play like a band, on top of the orchestra. They can slip in and out of cohesion and it can make it difficult for the orchestra to keep up. During the God of War segment, the end consisted of a very quick drum line that a lot of the string section and choir were having trouble keeping up with.
And the audio mixing was pretty crap. The keyboard/piano/synth organ was severely under-leveled all night. That poor beautiful woman had entire keyboard solos that no one could hear. I was basically in the front row and I couldn't hear anything she was doing. The drums often overpowered the strings and what few brass works were there were pretty muted.
And they fucked up the Chrono Trigger Theme! I was screaming inside my own head.
The most surprising thing of the night was the Grandia Medley. it was perfect. There were no mistakes, no timing issues, the arranged music was beautifully done, everything flowed into everything flawlessly, I was super impressed. There were a few people in the front who have season tickets for the BSO who came because it's a night at the BSO and not because they know about the legacy of video game music, so they were lost and visibly annoyed by the Castlevania stuff or the God of War stuff, but when they did the Grandia Medley and the FFT/FF12 medley, their faces lit up. It was a beautiful piece, something that they should gravitate more towards in the future.
I'm pretty hard on orchestras when preforming game music because it's super easy to hear mistakes in pieces that are so well known, so don't take what I said above to mean I didn't like the performance. I thought it was quite good. But I've also seen other orchestra troops take what they're doing, put their own spin on it, and COMPLETELY change the game.
The WDR Radio Orchestra has pretty much set the standard on what these things need to be, and it feels like a lot of orchestra troops are struggling to keep up. That and every performance like this is old square classics with one or two odd men out to spice things up. We're at the point where ending the night with One Winged Angel is almost gauche (at least it was done well). I made a joke afterwards about how whether it was more gauche that they started with FF7 and ended with FF7 or that the encore was "Still Alive". I wish more troops like these would start looking at newer or more niche music to do. Auston Winry is probably going to get OST of the year for Journey, but no one other than his own troop is doing that music. Skyrim had a wonderful soundtrack that a ton of people who are newer gamers are going to identify with.
And I'm still waiting for someone who's not the WDR to do Donkey Kong Country.
Their rendition of Snake Eater was really fun though, I enjoyed it a lot. Here's a video of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLv4lWow1eY&list=UUW0Pxle6RGaN-xl6kbYNbJA&index=1&feature=plcp
It didn't set the world on fire, but it was a nice night out at the orchestra. I'd certainly go again, with high hopes that they'd improve on last night's performance. And seriously people, if you're gonna go to these things, dress up. You don't have to wear a tux or ballroom gown but for christ's sakes, it's the Symphony, don't go in jorts and a t-shirt. Slacks, a nice shirt, dress shoes, look presentable. I felt actively embarrassed for the girl in the Buzz Lightyear hoodie. And don't bring your infant children, for fuck's sake.
rg, type in "rockestralgamemusic" when you order.