Music review: RSNO: Video Games Music in Concert, Usher Hall, Edinburgh - 'a stirring evening of drama and humour'
This was a stirring, involving evening of drama and humour, lapped up by game aficionados and newbies alike, writes David Kettle
RSNO: Video Games Music in Concert, Usher Hall, Edinburgh ****
Full disclosure: I’m not a gamer (at least not since Manic Miner on a trusty ZX Spectrum in the 1980s). So what was I doing at the RSNO’s video games music concert? Probably something similar to quite a lot of the Usher Hall’s impressively big, diverse and enthusiastic audience, who’d arrived in gatherings of multi-generational families or groups of mates. Not everyone knew all the evening’s music – selected from soundtracks across a wide collection of games and eras of gaming history. But there was plenty to savour all the same in music that had immersed some listeners in gameplay for hours (or days, or weeks) on end, but that might be entirely new to others (including me).
There was the throbbing, bluesy rock of No Escape from Darren Korb’s Hades, and the chilling folksy Lullaby of Woe from Marcin Przybylowicz’s Witcher III (delivered with appropriately captivating angelic eeriness by solo singer Kieran Penman). And there were plenty of larger-than-life, drum-pounding, brass-snarling fantasy tunes too, epitomised by the exotic Malach, Angel Messenger from conductor Eímear Noone’s own music for World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor. Noone was a natural on the podium, clear and commanding in her conducting, with an innate sense for this music’s ebb and flow, and warmly engaging in her chat too.
But it was the RSNO itself – and, most importantly, its Youth Chorus and Changed Voices singers, who packed out the choir seats in an already crammed-full Usher Hall stage – that injected vivid colour, compelling drama and a nice dash of Hollywood slickness to the evening. A few hasty adjustments to mic levels were a distraction from the otherwise gentle amplification. But it was nonetheless a stirring, involving evening of drama and humour, lapped up by appreciative listeners who provided an almost entirely fresh audience for the RSNO – game aficionados and newbies alike.