Final Symphony

Producer Thomas Böcker in 2010

Thomas Böcker first began producing orchestral concerts of video game music in 2003 with the first Symphonic Game Music Concert in Leipzig, Germany. In 2008, he, through his production company Merregnon Studios, began a series of four concerts of video game music that used longer, more elaborate arrangements of themes from the individual pieces of music from the games. This Symphonic series of concerts stood in contrast to the more standard concerts, which played straightforward orchestral versions of individual songs. The four concerts were Symphonic Shades – Hülsbeck in Concert (2008), Symphonic Fantasies: Music from Square Enix (2009), Symphonic Legends – Music from Nintendo (2010), and Symphonic Odysseys: Tribute to Nobuo Uematsu (2011). Both Symphonic Fantasies and Symphonic Odysseys featured music from the Final Fantasy series composed by Nobuo Uematsu. Böcker has said that he considers Uematsu to be "the most famous composer of video game music and in general one of the most influential", and that Uematsu's 20020220 - Music from Final Fantasy concert in 2002 was a big influence on his own concerts.[1]

By May 2012, Böcker was working on a concert of music solely from the Final Fantasy series, titled Final Symphony. The idea for the concert was first proposed by Uematsu in 2009 after Symphonic Fantasies; the concert had featured Final Fantasy music as one of its four components, but unlike the other three the music had been a straightforward medley rather than a more complicated arrangement.[2] Uematsu had asked the team to keep the arrangements similar to those in other Final Fantasy concerts, but after the concert he felt that an opportunity had been missed to create something unique like the other three arrangements, especially the Secret of Mana section.[3] He encouraged Böcker to take more liberties with the source material if the opportunity arose, and hoped that another concert could be created in the future. Böcker proposed Final Symphony later that year to Uematsu, and got approval from Square Enix while coordinating a Tokyo concert of Symphonic Fantasies.[2] Final Symphony is the first concert consisting entirely of new Final Fantasy arrangements in over ten years, since 20020220 - Music from Final Fantasy.[4]

Böcker and the arrangers intended the arrangements in the concert to be "about telling the stories of the games". In order to "capture the atmosphere of the games", they limited the concert to three games from the series, so as not to spread the concert too thin.[2] They chose the games to be Final Fantasy VI, VII, and X, not only because they liked the music in the games but because they felt previous concerts, including to an extent Symphonic Fantasies and Odysseys, had failed to evoke the feeling of the games due to focusing on the battle music in an unbalanced manner. In an interview Böcker used Final Fantasy VII as an example, stating that only part of "the game's dark, romantic, melancholic, and hopeful story" was being portrayed by solely orchestrating the battle music from the game.[2] Böcker wanted to focus on "longer pieces [and] deeper storytelling" than other concerts like the Distant Worlds series, so as to offer fans "something they really never heard before".[5] Final Symphony was the first concert produced by Merregnon Studios without outside financial support,[6] and Böcker regards it as the riskiest venture Merregnon Studios had undertaken to date, as they could only rely on their own belief that audiences would respond strongly enough to the concert for it to be successful despite the production costs of producing a concert of the quality they wanted.[3]

Arranger Jonne Valtonen in 2010

Jonne Valtonen, Roger Wanamo, and Masashi Hamauzu created the arrangements for the concert. Valtonen and Wanamo had previously worked with Böcker on the concerts in the Symphonic series, and Böcker has stated that if they had been unavailable for the project he would not have created Final Symphony at all. Hamauzu, in addition to arranging the Final Fantasy X music, was one of the composers of the original pieces he arranged. Uematsu, who composed music for all three games, served as a consultant for the project, though he did not arrange any pieces.[2] When they first began the project, Böcker, Valtonen, and Wanamo took a few months to play through the games, watch playthrough videos, and read reviews and analyses of the games.[7] They did not research other arrangements that have been done of the pieces, as they feel the general approach to video game music orchestration is very different from their style.[8] They then got together to propose which tracks would be arranged, and decide which soundtracks worked best as a piano concerto, a symphonic poem, or a symphony. They chose a symphonic poem for VI, a piano concerto for X, and a symphony in three movements for VII.[7] As director and producer, Böcker was involved in the work on the arrangements from the beginning. He set the direction and was able to comment on the progress of the arrangers' work via e-mail and ICQ. He has emphasised, however, that Valtonen and Wanamo are "masters of their art" and were given all the necessary artistic freedom.[8]

The Final Fantasy VI poem follows the journey of Terra Branford, "the heroine born with the gift of magic". The poem explores the stages of her life through the game, as she escapes from slavery, faces her amnesia, discovers the source of her powers, and saves the world from the insane Kefka Palazzo. Final Fantasy VI was the first Final Fantasy game that Wanamo had played, and he wanted to tell the story of the game as it felt to him.[9] Wanamo has described the arrangement as the most difficult one he had done to date.[5] Originally, the poem was going to follow the story of the group of heroes, before Wanamo made Terra the focus, and ended up dropping the themes of the other heroes due to length.[10] The Final Fantasy X piano concerto was arranged by Hamauzu not to tell the story of the game, but to express the "continuum" of the series through the lens of the game. While inspired by the game's story, Hamauzu also drew inspiration from the rest of the franchise to make the concerto more than "a series of separate scenes and stories".[9] He feels that a hallmark of Böcker's concerts is that they are not limited to directly translating the original works, but instead tie them to a wider creative process.[11] Valtonen created the three movements of the Final Fantasy VII symphony to show three aspects of the game's setting. The first movement, "Nibelheim Incident", follows the villain Sephiroth in his journey through the game; the second, "Words Drowned by Fireworks", explores the relationship between Cloud Strife, Aerith Gainsborough, and Tifa Lockhart; while the third movement, "The Planet's Crisis", depicts the final clash between Cloud and Sephiroth.[9] He tried to "bring out both the darkest moments as well as the heart" of the game.[5]

The first performance of Final Symphony was in Wuppertal, Germany at the Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal on May 11, 2013. The concert was held twice that day, performed by the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra, and was conducted by Eckehard Stier, who had previously conducted for Symphonic Fantasies in Tokyo. It featured Benyamin Nuss, who had also performed in Symphonic Fantasies, on piano for the Final Fantasy X piano concerto.[9][12] The concert was performed again on May 30 at the Barbican Centre in London, England by the London Symphony Orchestra. It was the first concert of video game music by the orchestra.[13] Stier and Nuss repeated their performances from the premier.[12] The following year, the concert was presented in four more locations. Stier conducted for all four performances, while Katharina Treutler replaced Nuss for the Tokyo, Aarhus, and Stockholm concerts, and Mischa Cheung performed in Tampere.[14][15][16][17] The arrangements were slightly modified for the 2014 performances, and a new encore piece, "Suteki da ne", was performed at the Tampere concert.[18][19]

The Tokyo concert was the first video game music concert in Japan to receive a standing ovation, according to Merregnon Studios.[14] It was described by both Dengeki Online and Famitsu as magnificent, with a bold and refreshing style that was met with "thunderous applause".[20][21] The London performance was also praised by critics; Joe Hammond of Video Game Music Online, Ed Williams of The 405, and Mariusz Borkowski of Gamemusic.pl all praised the concert for its powerful performance as both video game and classical music, and Audun Sorlie of Original Sound Version noted the fierce applause and standing ovations at both the London and Wuppertal performances.[22][23][24][25] In 2016, Final Symphony made its North American debut. Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi was present for concert and audience Q&A sessions at the California shows, the concert in San Francisco boasted a crowd of over 2,700 and made it the largest ever audience for a single performance produced by Merregnon Studios.[26] Additional concerts will be held in Birmingham and Newcastle (United Kingdom), Stuttgart (Germany), and Wrocław (Poland) in 2023 for the series' tenth anniversary.[27]

Parts of the Final Symphony programme have been presented over the years by various orchestras, such as by the Munich Radio Orchestra at the Prince Regent Theatre Munich, the London Symphony Orchestra at the Philharmonie de Paris, the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen at the Stadthalle Reutlingen and the Dortmunder Philharmoniker at the Theater Dortmund. This approach was continued in Böcker's later production Symphonic Memories – Music from Square Enix, which premiered in 2018 with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at the Konserthuset Stockholm and has since been performed by the Oulu Symphony Orchestra at the Oulu Music Centre, the St. Gallen Symphony Orchestra at the Tonhalle St. Gallen, the Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra at Culttz Kawasaki and the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz at the Pfalzbau Ludwigshafen.[28]