The Orchestra Lamoureux takes a break from Debussy to do Uematsu

The Orchestre Lamoureux was founded in 1881, and as Simon Parkin points out, premiered Debussy’s Nocturnes, as well as his seminal La mer. The French orchestra also does a damned fine version of Nobuo Uematsu’s “One Winged Angel” (From Final Fantasy 7), as Parkin describes in his wonderful piece about a performance of the Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy concert series in Paris:

In here [conductor Arnie] Roth has found the Final Fantasy series’ spiritual centrepoint, one that the games have moved away in recent years, much to the angst of fans. “Sephiroth!” is a reminder of the passion that brought the crowd here tonight, transporting them en masse to a younger place, where the games did the things they wanted to, where Sakaguchi, like a father, would never leave them, where everything would stay the same and be just as exciting within and despite its constancy.