So years back, Final Fantasy had concert tours such as Voices, Tour de Japon, Distant Worlds. A relatively new series had been introduced in 2014 which is A New World: Intimate music from Final Fantasy. According to the FF wikia, this series is aimed to perform the music of FF in a smaller scale, based upon the awareness that there are smaller cities and concert venues which are not able to support a full orchestra.
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| Exterior of KLCC |
Event details
Sun, 21 Feb 2016
3.00pm
Musicians of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra
Arnie Roth, conductor
Benyamin Nuss, piano
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| Got me ticket |
Setlist
The Red Wings (IV)
Victory Theme
The Promise/ Blinded by Light (XIII)
Town (I)
Selbina (XI)
Fragments of Memories (VIII)
Final Battle (X)
Danger in the Forest (IX)
Final Battle (X)
Home, Sweet Home (V)
Rebel Army Theme (II)
Zanarkand (X)
Chocobo Medley
Interval
The Decisive Battle (VI)
Ivalice Landscapes (XII)
A New World (V)
Troia (IV)
Moogle Theme Medley
Fight with Seymour (X)
Those who Fight (VII)
Force Your Way (VIII)
Extra (not written on distributed pamphlet): One Winged Angel (VII)
It was really a smaller scale performance than I had expected, it would be more suitable to describe this as an ensemble. I started counting, approximately 12 members + 1 conductor. My seat was one of the front seats and the height was slightly lower than the stage, thus I can't see the full layout of the ensemble. I roughly deduced 1 pianist, 2 violinist, 1 viola (I presume), 1 cello, 1 double bass, 1 flute player, 2 percussionists, 1 guitarist, 2 brass players.
Unlike the previous concerts, A New World doesn't have a choir or singers, thus no main vocal songs of the series were performed, neither did Dancing Mad made the list (even though One Winged Angel did). Instead what was different was that not all the pieces were performed by the whole ensemble, some were performed as duets, string quartet, and even piano solo. And A New World didn't have a screen to show the animation videos like the previous concerts.
What I enjoyed was The Promise/ Blinded by Light. Same as Distant Worlds, the concert started with a piece, then the conductor Arnie Roth will give a welcoming speech, followed by the opening of the concert with the Victory Theme before moving on to the next piece. This time, after the Victory Theme opening, he went to the back of the stage, grabbed his violin, and performed The Promise/ Blinded by Light as a duet with piano. For those who know, The Promise is a very sweet piece and requires a somewhat sharp yet harmonious control over the violin, whereas Blinded by Light is a very heavy piece with a soilder's spirit. It was the first time I saw Arnie Roth on a violin and he did a very spectacular job at it.
For those music that uses the whole ensemble, the main melody switches from instrument to instrument. The main melody was played by the violin at one time, and it will switch to the flute, then another instrument. I noticed that the cellist actually had a chance to play the main melody in one of the pieces, which is very amusing because lower pitched instruments normally don't get to play the main line.
The Chocobo medley really did went intimate, an ukulele was introduced for a part as the background line. Arnie Roth stated that it was Nobuo Uematsu had lived in Hawaii for a while thus the ukulele. During this piece, the clarinet player occasionally played out a whistle that mimics the sound of a bird, or in this case, sound of a Chocobo. Not what expected of an actual orchestra but it was fun. That clarinet player was also seen changing from his clarinet to bass clarinet while playing the same piece.
A new addition to the series was Ivalice Landscapes, its a medley of some music in FF XII. I played FF XII at the early stages then the PS2 got spoiled so I didn't get far to be able to enjoy more music. I was glad to hear a short line of The Royal City of Rabanastre in this piece, but was a little sad that I didn't hear the Eastersands in it. This piece mostly consist of slow music.
Those Who Fight was a piano solo, I'm giving a very good rating for this. Benyamin Nuss played it with a lot of emotion.
As this concert aim is to give a similar experience of Distant Worlds in a smaller scale, One Winged Angel was included as an extra, but without the choir. For those who had experienced Distant Worlds, there is a little fun in this and it was again used in A New World.
About MPO (Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra) seating
For Distant Worlds I got a sit at the upper circle, which I was able to view the orchestra from a bird's eye view. That was a distance away from the stage.
In A New World, I sat in the stalls, thus the view is as in the picture above. I wasn't able to get a view of the full ensemble, but I was close enough to see that the clarinet player was using a different mouthpiece from time to time (thus able to deduce that he switches to bass clarinet). It was very close to the stage that I was even able to see rings on the player's hands.
About pricing in MPO, the stalls are the cheapest, followed by the upper circle, lower circle, then suites. A New World is cheaper than Distant Worlds in general. MPO provides student price provided that we have a student card, however student prices limits the choice of seating to the stalls.
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| Happy kid |
I heard that an upcoming concert series of Square Enix is going to include Kingdom Hearts' music alongside with Final Fantasy. My wait is getting closer to the end.
