The string section’s tense, basso profondo turbulence resolves into the bleak drama of desolation, before urgency enters in the form a rapid tempo shift. The opening track on the latest CD by Canadian classical violinist Angele Dubeau and her all-female string orchestra, La Pieta, could be an interpretation of the theme from any number of recent Hollywood action blockbusters. Dubeau’s previous album was devoted to film music, yet her newest, Game Music, represents her arrangements for music from video games.
By some measures, video games have overtaken film in popularity and by any yardstick they are one of the world’s most prevalent preoccupations. Music has been commissioned for many of these games and Dubeau’s question is obvious enough: Why not mine them for the contemporary orchestral repertoire? At least in her hands, this music carries on many motifs familiar from the movies—whose composers have often borrowed from the vocabulary of the 19th century symphonic tradition. Will the themes from “Tetris” or “Halo 3: One Final Effort” become familiar guests in concert halls? Probably not, but Dubeau’s Game Music will make many of us aware of an outlet for composition that has largely been overlooked.
