You may think it odd, dedicating a festival to live music that isn’t, really, designed to be played live. Video game, film, and TV music, by definition, is designed to be recorded under very strict conditions, and played back at you with even more severe restrictions. You may get to hear a little bit of Borislav Slavov’s score for Baldur’s Gate 3 during a battle that you finish up in seconds, for instance. You may never get to hear some of the tracks made for the game at all, even, depending on your choices. Such is the format, such is the lot of a games composer.
But that’s all part of the fascination for Tommy Pearson, the concert producer and curator of London’s first-ever Soundtrack Festival. “The visceral feeling, the gut feeling you have, when you’re in the same room as an orchestra is so important to what this festival is,” he says in a speech announcing the festival at London’s BFI Southbank. “Even for music that isn’t designed to be played live, you can’t argue with the impact of hearing it performed by exceptional artists.”
And whilst a lot of the festival is dedicated to film and TV (as you’d expect; they’re much more mainstream-focused, after all), it’s encouraging and invigorating to see video game music represented so well as part of this inaugural soundtrack festival.
