This little musical gem, for all its small size, is a lot of fun for any Ghibli aficionado. The premise is simple: gather a staggering number of musicians in the cavernous Nippon Budokan, hang an immense projector behind them and get Hisaishi Joe in to conduct his compositions written for Miyazaki’s Ghibli films. Have him to personally contribute a little delicate but accomplished piano-playing at key points, and intersperse the sadly too-short clips with him speaking about his musical process, and you have a very pleasant viewing experience.
It’s somewhat like the trips to see Howard Shore conducting an orchestra playing the music to the Lord of the Rings films I’ve been on, but more informal, less involving, and surprisingly enough, on a much grander scale.
For not only is there a full orchestra with some specialized instruments like taiko drums for a booming rendition of ‘Tataraba’ from Mononoke-Hime and a child choir for the adorable saccharine singalong of the Ponyo theme (with a very sweet little girl looking just the right amount of hapless as she sings the lead line at the front), but about five other full choirs for a truly immense sound, a full marching band providing perhaps the most powerful moment of the night, and even a great little slinky jazz band Hisaishi himself looks like he’s having great fun playing along with for the music from Porco Rosso.
Everything is consummately performed and sounds beautiful, leaving me deeply impressed. My only faults were that from what I could tell in the interview, there’s a certain eagerness to sweep under the carpet those horrible original synthesised scores for the likes of Laputa, to pretend the recent reworkings were in fact always there (although I may be totally wrong and have just failed to understand the relevant parts), and much more than that, that it was all so very short. I wanted three hours of this! Altogether the music was perhaps 45 minutes. That’s just not enough!
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