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    Review: International Orchestras Are Finally Back at Carnegie

    The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London was the first foreign ensemble to play at the hall since February 2020.What sets a cultural capital apart is not just the quality of its music-making, but also the quantity and variety. No American symphonic ensemble, for example, is better than the Cleveland Orchestra, but it stands largely alone at home. Few big groups travel to Cleveland the way they do to New York.Or did. The city’s performing arts landscape has blossomed again following long pandemic closures, but virus surges, visa issues, quarantine requirements and financial concerns have meant that orchestral tours — usually the meat of Carnegie Hall’s season — are still slumbering, almost two years later.But tours, too, are slowly reawakening. The marquee offering comes later this month, when the mighty Vienna Philharmonic comes to Carnegie for a three-night stand. A landmark arrived on Monday evening, however, when the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London became the first international orchestra to appear at the hall since the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique on Feb. 24, 2020.The Royal Philharmonic, with a solidly spirited concert under its new music director, Vasily Petrenko, also celebrated its own milestones: its 75th season, and its first appearance at Carnegie in 25 years. (If you want to talk about a real cultural capital, the group, founded by the conductor Thomas Beecham in 1946, is one of at least five major orchestras based in London.)Kian Soltani was the soloist in Elgar’s Cello Concerto.Richard TermineThe program was standard-issue: the Four Sea Interludes from Britten’s opera “Peter Grimes,” Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Holst’s mammoth suite “The Planets” — British composers, all. There is, in an era of thoroughly internationalized ensembles, something quaint and a little silly about the notion of touring with your country’s repertory.Particularly when the works are, like these, chestnuts done all the time. I endorse British ensembles advocating British music, but “The Planets” is hardly in need of advocacy, and the Royal Philharmonic, for all its liveliness, didn’t sound in it much different than, say, the New York Philharmonic would have. The number of orchestras with actual sonic or interpretive idiosyncrasies in music of their compatriots is by now almost or actually zero.But with Petrenko a tall, animated presence on the podium — bouncing up and down, shimmying, and hypnotically curling the long fingers of his left hand, witchlike — it was a pleasant evening. From the Britten on, the orchestra’s winds and brasses were particularly mellow and secure, sounding dewy in Holst’s “Venus” and adding to the bronzed ominousness of “Saturn” and the sensual hush of “Neptune,” which also featured the offstage voices of Musica Sacra, under Kent Tritle.The cellist Kian Soltani, the soloist in the Elgar, played with buttery understatement and intimacy, and considerable wit in the Lento. It speaks to his collegiality that his encore included five of the orchestra’s cellists in his arrangement of an excerpt from Shostakovich’s film score for “The Gadfly.” At the end of the concert, the full ensemble’s encore also abandoned Britain for Russia, with a cheerful rendition of the “Dance of the Tumblers” from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Snow Maiden.”Royal Philharmonic OrchestraPerformed on Monday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More

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    The Score of Final Fantasy Gets Its Due at the Concert Hall

    The beloved music for this video game and others have been covered on YouTube for years. Now some are performed at classical music’s grandest venues.LONDON — At a recent concert here, the bows of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra rose and fell like the mighty sword of Sephiroth, the silver-haired villain of Final Fantasy VII. Onstage, a 32-person choir thundered the antagonist’s name: “Sephiroth!”The audience in the 19th-century theater burst into applause when it recognized the opening notes of “One-Winged Angel,” a battle theme from the game that merges Latin opera, influences from Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” and caustic rock music.Almost 6,000 people of all ages attended this Final Fantasy VII Remake concert at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday, which showcased the soundtrack to the seventh installment of the hugely popular Japanese video game.Aine McColgan dressed in cosplay for the concert.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesCharlotte Ball as the game’s protagonist, Cloud Strife.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesA group of concert goers dressed as Final Fantasy VII characters, including Rufus Shinra, Cloud Strife and Scarlet.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesAt the concert, the two worlds of gaming and classical music merged, and while some concertgoers wore suits and bow ties, others dressed in cosplay as their favorite characters from the game.Charlotte Ball, 27, attended the evening dressed as the game’s protagonist, Cloud Strife, an ex-soldier and mercenary. She spent hours laboriously researching and designing her costume, a sleeveless turtleneck with embroidered brown braces, one shoulder of armor made from foam, and a short-haired blond wig that could easily belong to a member of BTS.“Whenever I hear its music, it brings me back to when I was a kid,” Ball said of the game. “It’s a homage to my childhood.”The audience burst into applause when it recognized the opening notes of “One-Winged Angel,” a battle theme from Final Fantasy.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesFinal Fantasy VII was released in 1997 on PlayStation, and has now been bought more than 11 million times across all major platforms. The enormous popularity of its electronically synthesized score by Nobuo Uematsu evidences the huge impact video game music can have.The Final Fantasy games have an interactive, role-player format, which immerses gamers in the journeys of its heroic protagonists. These journeys are interwoven with music throughout, like a film score. As a result, “you do not just watch a game. You play it, you feel it, you embody it,” said Melanie Fritsch, a professor in media and cultural studies at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany. “Sometimes, people start crying when there is a good moment in a game that’s nicely implemented with the music.”Because of this emotional connection, the influence of these scores extends far beyond the games themselves. Since 2007, there have been more than 200 official Final Fantasy concerts across 20 countries, according to Square Enix, the company behind the game.At the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony this summer, athletes marched to songs from popular games including Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Sonic the Hedgehog and Final Fantasy, music described by its organizers as “a quintessential part of Japanese culture that is loved around the world.”Uematsu, now 62, single-handedly composed the first nine installments of Final Fantasy scores, creating music that remains a nostalgic rabbit-hole for many fans. A self-described musical omnivore without formal musical training, Uematsu’s work draws on influences from an eclectic mix of progressive rock, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Celtic and classical music.But video game scores have often been dismissed by devotees of mainstream classical music. Even in Japan, the birthplace of modern video game music, “up until after the millennium, it was regarded as a lesser type of music,” said Junya Nakano, 50, the co-composer of the Final Fantasy X soundtrack.Yoko Shimomura, a prolific video game composer.Osamu NakamuraNobuo Uematsu, who single-handedly composed the first nine installments of Final Fantasy scores.David Wolff-Patrick/Redferns, via Getty Images“There are some melodies I composed almost 30 years ago I’ve almost forgotten,” the composer Junya Nakano said. “But fans are still playing them.”Kosuke Okahara for The New York TimesGrowing up as a video game fan who also had classical music training, Nakano aspired to join the early generation of game composers, like Uematsu and Koichi Sugiyama.For the tenth installment of Final Fantasy, Nakano worked with Uematsu on the game’s score. Released in 2001, it was the first game in the franchise to use voice actors for its characters. The challenge for Nakano was to compose the music, along with Uematsu and Masashi Hamauzu, with only a “very rough outline” of the narrative for each movie scene. “We really had to create music based on our imagination,” Nakano said. Along with its sequel, Final Fantasy X sold more than 14 million copies.Writing video game scores isn’t always respected by those in the classical music fields. After majoring in piano at the Osaka College of Music, Yoko Shimomura, 53, applied for a job as a video game composer, a career path that her professors discouraged, she said.“Adults in my generation back then had little awareness about game music,” Shimomura said in a video interview. “So they had no concept to compare it to whatsoever.”But Shimomura went on to become one of the most prolific female video game composers in the world. Her magnum opus is the eclectic score for Kingdom Hearts, first released in 2002, which combines her signature piano, opera and opening music sung by the Japanese American singer, Hikaru Utada.Outside of Japan, the “hegemonic thinking” that elevated classical music at the expense of video game compositions has also persisted, according to Fritsch, the media and cultural studies professor.“There is so much music out there in the world that is not composed by white males with wigs. And it’s good music,” said Fritsch, who also works in ludomusicology, a nascent field of academic research dedicated to the study of video game music.Since 2007, there have been more than 200 official Final Fantasy concerts across 20 countries.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesThe first installment of Final Fantasy, released in 1987, used technology that initially meant the music was limited to a handful of electronic sounds. As the technology of the game systems evolved, the music metamorphosed with it. The arrival of Final Fantasy VIII in 1999 allowed Uematsu to use recordings from a live orchestra and choir for the first time. “The fans were always aware of the quality of music,” Nakano said.Online, those fans are now giving the music new life. Previously, illegal MP3 downloads, expensive CD imports from Japan and sheet music were the only way video-game-music enthusiasts could replay their favorite songs. Now, a community of fans post videos to YouTube of covers, tutorials and their own compositions, providing a way into the often inaccessible world of classical music.“There are some melodies I composed almost 30 years ago I’ve almost forgotten,” Nakano said, “But fans are still playing them.”For 18 years, Kyle Landry has created piano arrangements of music from various anime, video games and movies on YouTube, gaining more than 700,000 followers. Shimomura’s music, and Uematsu’s in particular, have been gold mines of inspiration.“Nobuo Uematsu’s compositions have been touching my life since 2003, and contributed much inspiration for me over the years,” said Landry.Among the most prolific cover artists is the mysterious “Zohar002,” a Japanese pianist whose covers of music from Chrono Trigger — a 1995 RPG game considered the greatest of the 16-bit era — enticed a huge following on YouTube from 2007, until the account was mysteriously removed, sparking mournful odes to Zohar002’s brilliance, and rumors that they were in fact the game’s composer, Yasunori Mitsuda.“I never dreamed such a great variation would be created by so many fans,” Shimomura said of the online renditions, adding that some fan compositions were better than the originals. “It’s a really great honor for me to say that people love my music.”Hisako Ueno contributed reporting. More