Search - Joe Hisaishi :: Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke: Symphonic Suite)

The soundtrack themes developed as symphonic movements

David Mankins | Cambridge, Massachusetts | 11/30/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The ``symphonic'' format lets Joe Hisaishi explore in greater depth the themes he created for the movie soundtrack. Indeed, this may be a better format for the music --- the sound-track chops the themes into 30 short (and redundant) bits; in this format each theme is given several minutes of development. As a result, the music is more complete and less redundant.One slight disappointment is that the vocal pieces do not appear on this album (though the ``Princess Mononoke'' theme does get its own movement). Another disappointment is that the wooden-rattle ``Kodama'' theme isn't used, either. Despite these, this is a wonderful arrangement of Hisaishi's music."

A symphonic masterpiece

Joshua Kaufman | Cincinnati, OH | 02/13/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you by chance read my review for the Mononoke OST, then you know really really love the music from it. What we have here in this Japanese-only CD is an arrangement of 8 of the themes from the movie. The ensamble is larger, and the tracks are too.The music of this CD is purely symphonic. It's almost as if Hisaishi took each theme and made a mini-symphonic movement out of them. The melodies are fleshed out, there's lots of orchestral color, as well as lots of great new development added. For instance in track 3, after a wonderful statement of the melody on the piano and then oboe, the strings start playing what is basically a fugue on the main motif. It's a wonderful effect, and each track on the CD has its own wonderful effect.Perhaps the single best reason for buying the CD is the final track, entitled "Ashitaka and San", and corrisponds to the same-named track on the OST. It's one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard, and it's even better in its longer form. It's a wonderful mini-piano concerto, and would make even Rachmonioff proud. So overall, even if this CD is expensive (though not overly so, as it costs 3,059 Yen in Japan), it's quite worth it for any fan of orchestral and/or anime music. While I would probably suggest choseing the US OST over this for price concerns, if you can afford to spend $35 on a CD, this one is surely one that warrents it."

Not a must buy...

fli | San Francisco, CA USA | 09/25/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I actually like the Original Motion Picture soundtrack better than this symphonic re-orchestration. Yes, the soundtrack CD chops the songs into bits, but they flow pretty well together. The symphonic CD pretty much just puts those bits together into longer tracks- they still follow the action of the movie pretty closely, so it doesn't necessarily make for a better listen.Also, the recording of the U.S. soundtrack CD seems to have a better dynamic range than the symphonic (perhaps due to HDCD tweaking). Finally, the sythesized instruments are lost in the symphonic orchestration, which I liked in the score."