I think we have a winner for the smartest auction.

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/7758/clipboard01ne.png

I'd like to emphasize on this. I really want to show the concert to a few people who can neither attend nor watch the stream Saturday evening.
Since I can't record the video-stream myself, if somebody takes the task I'd be eternally thankful.

I'm instructing someone to make a recording from the high-quality digital WDR4 channel while I'm at the concert.

Unfortunately, that means that I won't be able to grab the video stream simultaneously. So I'd appreciate if someone could save the broadband video stream with GetASFStream.
It is very easy to do and I just tried it myself with a radio broadcast. Works just fine.

And with that, I'm off. Enjoy, people!

The concert just started. Live feed of the concert available at symphonicfantasies.com

Pretty cool that they're live streaming this. I'm watching now.

Teioh and I are both recording the feed, so hopefully we'll have a good video copy between the two of us.

The Secret of Mana section is beautiful.

Someone needs to record this. I just joined it and I think they are in paused. Can't wait for it to start! :-D
It's starting again....Please someone needs to rip this! LOL :-D

Additional Spam:
Simply awesome! Words can't describe how this concert was. I missed the first half though... Can't wait till somebody post this because I wanna see the first half! LOL :-D

Here's my recording, which includes both video and audio. I'm not sure if there was a feed that was a larger size than this one. It's quite small, but still watchable (and listenable.)

megaupload.com/?d=H5MB4OL7

I'm regretting my decision not to go; it was a great concert.

I just got home from Cologne a few minutes ago. The concert was simply stunning. I had tears in my eyes at times, especially with the Mana songs; experimental, yes, but it all completely caught the atmosphere, the feel of the game. I loved how many 'uncommon' instruments were used, and the originality of it all. But what really caught my attention was the fact that the audience was so *silent* during the performances. Clearly, this was a devoted fan audience. During the first half I didn't hear so much as a cough, during the second half a few behind me, but I've never before been to a concert where the audience behaved so well. Obviously, nobody wanted to miss anything!
I'm also still on a high from meeting the composers. I didn't think I'd get the ever see these people in real life, let alone at a concert in their honor, and get their autographs!

You are so lucky Dallista. I wished I was ever near there. LOL :-D Anyways... it was indeed an awesome concert without a fact. One of my most memorable moments was when they teased "One-Winged Angel". It was so epic. The Chrono Segment was simply awesome. The Prisoners of Fate was so beautifully arranged that it was mind blowing. It made me remember how epic the battle was in CC when I first played the game. This was an awesome concert. Can't wait to see it again...

I'm about 1.5 hours by car from Cologne, but in the weekends, that's manageable by car (traffic is murder during working days, which is why I opted for Cologne instead of Oberhausen, although I now wish I'd gone to both!). It was more than worth the drive. I loved each and every single song they performed, but was definitely most pleasantly surprised with Secret of Mana. And the guy on that special drum thing was just amazing (I'm doped on up three migraine painkillers, I cannot for the life of me remember what that instrument was called, haha.).
As much as I adored the concert (*please* let there be a CD release), I think what really warmed my heart was the reception these composers and everybody else involved with the concert got from the audience, and the request for an encore; they were treated almost like pop stars, heh!
Concerts like these should be done more often; it's the perfect way to get a younger audience into the concert halls.

I was there as well and i had some mixed feelings. There were great episodes, without question, but some arrangements seemed raw to me. For example, at the final fantasy prelude, they didn't really bring out the main melody that usually plays after the famous arpeggio accompaniment has run through once. also, i think the drum player was overrated, he should have just been a non-soloist in the orchestra. the drum solo he did at the encore was awfully long (2m15s) and didn't have anything to do with game music, it didn't even sound very impressive to me. not to mention the moderator with his sometimes flat and inappropiate comments..

but i don't want to lament too much here, it was still a great concert and i'll have to listen to it again to see if i don't just need time to appreciate some of the arrangements.. and kingdom hearts and secret of mana were superb anyways.

by the way, the asf posted here by squirrel is pretty low quality, are you sure there wasn't a higher quality stream? the sound-only radio broadcast probably has a better sound quality anyways, so it would be great to have that as well

edit: found this HQ cut:
http://isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=symphonic+fantasies

edit2: most of it is already posted on youtube:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...postcount=1047

Just got home from the concert. It was epic.

Im at an internet cafe in germanz posting this and let me just saz that last night#s concert was absolutelz mindblowing! The concert hall is ridiculouslz beautiful and the sound is all acoustic, so I was verz pleased with that.

I got there about an hour earlz, but the line to meet the composers was too long. So I walked around the venue taking pictures of the people and the lines. Also took lots of stalker photos of the composers, haha! Then I just sat and watched the composers signing and talked to some nice German fellows from I think the squaresound or sqexmusic forums.

So then I headed over to mz area and got inside when the doors opened. Took some pictures and had prettz good seats. I switched with mz brother#s seat after the intermission though.

The arrangements were incredible and the Chrono Trigger segment was definitelz the best. For starters, the surprise theme was SO perfect and in retrospect so obvious. And it was great how at the end of the piece each song#s melodz made an appearance. Oh, and the surprise Twinkle Twinkle Holidazs in the kingdom hearts was great too. That is one of mz verz favorite songs ever!

The encore was THE BEST of the whole evening though. It started with Destati and I was like, no one winged angel? But I realiyed it was one song from each game. All in all, worth the trip across the world and I#m so glad I went. I just wish I could have found the internet beforehand and met up with zou guzs! Oh well,

Tadaima! It was a great evening and the concert hall was optically and acoustically awesome. My favorite suite was the Chrono one but the award for the most innovative goes to Secret of Mana.

My photos coming soon!

Phat: Sorry that I couldn't help you. :(

Wow, where did the Super High Res feed come from? I was stuck watching the postage stamp window.

My favorite was also the Secret of Mana section. Also, there were several times where it seemed like the arranger(s) was (were) chanelling Claude Debussy, particularly in the vocal sections.

hmm interesting point squirrel, have to look for that when i listen to it again.

here's a 256kbs mp3 cut:
MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service

edit: there's an error in the second track, secret of mana, at about 8:26, where it stops and repeats from some seconds earlier. should be repairable though.

along to the HQ video stream cuts:
symphonic fantasies | isoHunt - the BitTorrent and P2P search engine

and the youtube postings (just look for it on YT):
NeoGAF - View Single Post - Symphonic Fantasies (SE concert in Cologne) will be LIVE STREAMED tomorrow 12.09.2009

Photos are up. Enjoy! Click me

I also took a bunch of pictures and videos at the venue, but they're not really that interesting. Only posted a few pics here. Symphonic Fantasies pictures by dallista - Photobucket
Hamu-Sumo, I think I saw you and Teioh very briefly yesterday, right? I arrived at Cologne pretty late, past 4 pm, and happened to catch you guys sitting at the MacDo, but by the time I'd parked the car and gotten back there, you were gone, and I still wanted to do some shopping, so figured I might as well just say hi at the Philharmonie. I arrived there around 5.45 pm, I think, and ended up with maybe 30/40 people ahead of me in the queue, so that was nice. :-) Anyway, I just happened to catch you standing at the queue when I was standing on the stairs. You and especially Teioh will have to forgive me if I came across as overly hyper; I was a bit high on migraine painkillers (which thankfully did their job and kicked the pain about five minutes before the concert started!).

Ah Dallista, no worries. You mentioned that you had seen us at McDonalds when we met at the venue and I'd say we were all hyper shortly before the concert started :D And it's even more exciting when this is your first concert. Some of these pictures nicely show how crowded it was. I wouldn't be surprised if only half the people standing in line were able to get their autographs but I lost track of it later.

Also about the attendees, I never heard any coughs and I was pleasantly surprised not to spot any Cosplayers.
This really was a prime example of a good game music concert and I think this feeling was also delivered via the video stream.

Yeah, the people in the audience were so well behaved! I only heard a few coughs somewhere behind me after the break, but only a couple. I've been to enough concerts to know this was really special in that regard.

There's just no way everybody in the queue could've gotten autographs; there were way too many people. It did seem to me as if people got more than one item per composer autographed; if so, maybe they should have had a restriction placed on that to get more people through the line.

I'm definitely gonna keep a closer eye on news about such events; if there's another concert next year in the Nordrhein-Westfalen area, I'm so there!


BTW Maybe a stupid question, but is there a list somewhere of all the songs played in each suite? I'm pretty sure I failed to recognize one or two bits, particularly in the Mana suite.

It sounds like it was another successful event! Wish I could have been there. Congrats to Thomas and the team for putting on another great show!

It was an epic show, and great meeting Teioh and Hamu-Sumo again, much love to you two.

Got to hang out with Uematsu alot, so rad

Awesome stuff. Thanks for posting the links, Sorcerer88!

Now to go about converting this to mkv, since I absolutely despise the ASF format, necessary as it may be for streaming. It'd be great if translated transcriptions are available so we can splice them in.

In any case, from the few snippets of what I've listened to, the choir was used quite often. I could not really tell, so does anyone know the language they sang in?

Finally, any idea where we could go about securing translations for the German language emceeing? :D

The choir was singing in Latin.

I can do a translation if nobody else wants but need the concert on my harddrive first.