LIVE REPORT: Tampere Philharmonic - Game On
Tampere-talo, Tampere; March 28th, 2025
If there’s one way to lure this semi-retired music journalist-turned-fantasy author out of her house and all the way to another town for a show, it’s the announcement of any orchestra playing music from video games. Most recently, it seems that the Tampere Philharmonic was putting on a show called Game On, which took place on March 28th, 2025, at Tampere-talo, boasting an intriguing selection of orchestral video game scores. As the local game music dweeb in the Finnish journalism circuit, I had to make a day trip up to Tampere for the show!
Thanks to ScarletMemory Photography for joining me to take photos!
Game On
I’ve been to a few shows at Tampere-talo before, but they’ve always been in the vein of heavy music… Apocalyptica with the Avanti Chamber Orchestra, an unusually-placed Sonata Arctica show, or Marko Hietala’s Springtime of the Black Heart Tour, where I was selling merch and not actually in the audience. However, this was the first time seeing the local philharmonic in their own element, which was very cool. Right away I want to shout-out how fantastic the lighting was—it created a stunning atmosphere without feeling out of place or strange in context of game music.
It’s worth mentioning that this event was directly following another event, wherein the Tampere Filharmonia paired up with Pispala Clothing, but since I’m a ridiculous hippy who only wears harem pants, I assume my opinions on fashion would be out of place, so we opted to skip it since neither of us consider ourselves fashion experts.
The night’s conductor was Elisar Riddelin and right up front I can say that he was the most charismatic conductor that I’ve seen so far at game music shows. Granted, it’s worth mentioning that Orvar Säfström is Score’s host, so their composer doesn’t interact with the crowd—so really, Riddelin has one other guy as competition. He was exciting to listen to, with a lot of enthusiastic gestures and interesting stories that I unfortunately couldn’t quite follow in Finnish. The audience, however, appeared to be eating it up.
Elisar Riddelin
Video game music orchestras are always fascinating events, especially when you don’t know what’s coming. I saw as much as to expect a Toby Fox Undertale medley and some music from Alan Wake, the latter of which is a no-brainer as one of the most internationally popular Finnish video games. The rest of the set was a will-they, won’t-they grab bag. As an intense game music enthusiast, half of the excitement hearing which songs I recognize.
They started off with pretty obscure choices that I didn’t get, like “Clouds Over Baden” from Rolf Gustavson… which has possibly been used in video games but was not written for a video game original soundtrack, and “Waltz of the Flowers” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, which was included because it was used in Bioshock. Another game-adjacent choice was “Music for Symphony Orchestra: II. Allegro” by Yasushi Akutagawa. This was the most mystifying inclusion because Riddelin gave a very interesting story about Japanese composers but I understood so little of what he said that I have no idea whatsoever why this song was included. The final strange inclusion was Alexander Mosolov’s “Завод” [teräsvalimo in Finnish or The Iron Foundry in English], which has surely been foundational in classical industrial sounds, possibly even influencing songs like “Bowser’s Theme” from Super Mario 64 (at least that’s the song it evoked to me).
Then we had the unusual or rare choices, of which I am always the most curious! First of all, Undertale is one of those indie games that got so much positive feedback across the board (it is deceptively simple on the surface to the unexpecting new player) that the music became iconic. Though the best songs on the soundtrack—like “Spear of Justice” and boss theme “Megalovania”—haven’t yet been translated nicely for orchestras to play, I still get happy chills hearing any part of that game’s OST.
A genuinely unexpected song was from Lego Ninjago—I didn’t even know that was a video game (though I’m entirely not surprised based on how many Lego games there are in general), but it sounded far better than I’d have guessed. Music from Angry Birds (another internationally famous Finnish game), Fortnite, and Minecraft were all solid rare choices that you might never hear at game music shows.
Then, of course, we had the classic classics and the modern classics. The modern classics are songs—like “All Gone (No Escape)” from Last of Us and the music from Halo—are always picked because the games are broadly known and they also sound really cool when done by orchestras, so they’re easy to enjoy even if you don’t know the games. One of the most unique moments I’ve experienced at a game orchestra show was when Riddelin asked us to join in during the Halo music, humming along with a low note.
I was very impressed with their selection of famous games—the overused songs from Mario, Legend of Zelda, Skyrim, and so on—were notably absent, yet we were still treated to a fabulous rendition of the “Final Fantasy Theme” and the “Mega Man Suite,” which no one will ever complain about, because “Dr. Wily’s Castle” is one of the greatest video game songs of all time, period. It was so good that I felt my nervous system calm down momentarily—it’s usually dialed up to 11, which means I felt a moment of physical peace because the song immersed me so deeply.
However, even though my grin was already tearing my face in half, it was the finale of Brian Taylor’s “Assassin’s Creed IV” suite—as compiled by Andreas Hedlund—that was my main highlight. This is truly one of my favorite songs of all time and the reason I am obsessed with it was because it was also a main highlight of my first-ever video game orchestra performance. I had no idea that this suite was well-known enough to be included, so that was an absolute cherry-on-top finale for me!
As for the Tampere Philharmonic, I was extremely delighted by their overall performance. They played with professional precision and had a magnificently clear sound. Many of them were notably wearing the outfits from Pispala’s earlier event (if you browse the gallery, they’re the shirts with the patterns). They masterfully covered a vast spectrum of soundscapes and atmospheres—Alan Wake, for example, had brilliant thrills on top of moody atmospheres, executed gracefully. The brass had utmost delicacy and sudden, sharp notes were always crisply executed. The string section was on point and my only gripe with the drums and percussions, was that they failed to make me vibrate during the Assassin’s Creed suite (how do I turn up the volume in a music hall?).
One of my most common feedbacks is that I would always love to see more personality from Finns when performing. They’re magnificently talented and phenomenally professional… but I was vehemently harassed as a young violinist to move and have fun while playing. I hated the relentless nagging, so I stepped up my physicality to make people leave me alone… but ultimately realized that they had a point. It was more fun to get a bit into it and put a bit of myself into the music. So I always want to encourage Finns to allow a little fun to sneak in. My favorites to watch are always the ones who are clearly feeling the music and there is always a handful scattered about, like a violinist with a wild-bobbing hair bun or a percussionist who might have looked a little cheeky any time he got to play something unusual at just the right moment. Those are the moments that stand out, so I’d love to see them inject as much life into their music as they do energy!
On the whole, I’d have driven all the way to Tampere to see any one of the songs I love played so well, so it was absolutely worth the road trip to get to bask in the music hall’s surround-sound perfection. The Tampere Philharmonic gave us a fantastic musical journey with just the right build-up in familiarity to make the whole night constantly feel like it was getting better and better. As burnt out on live music as I am, there’s no higher praise than saying that a show plastered a big dumb grin on my face and left me dying for more. So thank you for the wonderful show, here’s hoping that we’ll be getting more video game music in the near future!
Setlist
Rolf Gustavson - “Clouds Over Baden”
Petri Alanko (comp. Pessi Levanto) - “Alan Wake Suite”
Toby Fox (comp. Roger Wanamo) - “Undertale Medley”
Pjotr Tšaikovski - “Waltz of the Flowers” (from The Nutcracker ballet)
Gustavo Santaolalla (comp. Andreas Hedlund) - “All Gone (No Escape)” (Last of Us)
Rom Di Prisco / Phill Boucher (comp. Jonne Valtonen) - “Fortnite”
Yasushi Akutagawa - “Music for Symphony Orchestra: II. Allegro”
Jay Vincent (comp. Toni Isokivi) - “Lego Ninjago Overture”
Nobuo Uematsu (orch. Roger Wanamo) - “Final Fantasy Theme”
Martin O'Donnell (comp. Jonne Valtonen) - “Halo”
Alexander Mosolov - “Teräsvalimo”
Daniel Rosenfeld (comp. Vytautas Lukocius) - “Minecraft Sweden”
Salla Hakkola / Ari Pulkkinen / Henri Sorvali / Elvira Björkman (comp. Jonne Valtonen) - “Angry Birds Medley”
Manami Matsumae / Takashi Tateishi / Harumi Fujita / Yasuaki Fujita (comp. Andreas Hedlund) - “Mega Man Suite”
Brian Tyler (comp. Andreas Hedlund) - “Assassin’s Creed IV Suite”
READ MORE: (2016) Score: Orchestral Game Music @ Sibeliusalo; (2017) Game Music Collective @ Finlandia-talo; (2019) Game Music Collective Band @ Nosturi; (2022) Game Music Collective @ Kulttuuritalo; (2023) Score: Orchestral Game Music @ Musiikkitalo
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