Author: Noriko Tsuzaki

The grand finale that transcends worlds—from the ethereal realms of video games to the epic landscapes of cinema. This concert celebrates the power of music to craft worlds, evoke heroes, and conjure dragons, featuring iconic scores from Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and legendary video game series like World of Warcraft.

As we journey from the computer screen to the big screen, the concert culminates in the timeless majesty of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, showcasing the transformative power of storytelling through sound.

Elgar’s elegiac Romance for Bassoon and Orchestra is paired with Harold Truscott’s intense Elegy and Fribbins’s Folk Songs for Viola and Chamber Orchestra, its three movements focusing on melodies from Wales, Serbia and Hungary. These aural peregrinations take the music east towards Soviet Russia, and the first Flute Concerto by Mieczysław Weinberg, composed in 1961. Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 10, composed in 1964, was dedicated to Weinberg, his close friend. In this arrangement by Rudolf Barshai it takes on the guise of a concentrated but epic Chamber Symphony.