BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
If you find yourself singing “Totoro, To-to-ro!” around the house (or without warning in a public place), you’ll be right at home at Natalya Aynsley’s upcoming gig.
On the back of her Worlds Connected show (featuring the music of Final Fantasy), this classically trained pianist will perform some of the most magical and moving music that pop culture has to offer.
Natalya will play the music of your favourite Studio Ghibli films, cycling through a whirl of Joe Hisaishi magic from My Neighbour Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away, and plenty in between.
The concert will last for two hours (though we could easily take 200 more). And even if you’re not into anime classics, the concert has the added twist of being played on piano in the style of Chopin.
Just expect that, while you listen to this Russian-born Australian pianist, you might be sitting next to a concertgoer dressed up as No-Face.
Natalya, let’s face it: Joe Hisaishi produces some of the most magical film music in the world.
Joe Hisaishi’s body of work is incredible — not just the scores he composed for the Ghibli films, but for movies as well as his stand-alone works.
His music has the ability to completely transport you to another place and time, and create a feeling of melancholy and nostalgia. It gives you all of the feels, as the kids would say!
Talk us through your program; you must have had a beautiful time finding the music from each movie? How did you narrow it down from such an extensive and inspiring catalogue?
Luckily, I didn’t have to work hard at all in finding the program! There’s a very talented Japanese pianist by the name of Lisa Nakazono who has created these stunning arrangements and performed them back in 2009. So, as soon as I came across a recording of her playing them by chance, I knew I had to share them with the world!
This music already carries with it so much character. But through this performance, we’ll hear it played in the style of Chopin. What does this approach mean to you on a practical level?
Who would’ve thought that Chopin and Ghibli music go so well together? The arrangements are so clever, and appeal to both Ghibli and Chopin fans.
The themes are taken from the movies themselves, so you’ll definitely recognise them if you’ve heard the originals before. Each piece has been based on an existing Chopin piece which, if you happen to be a Chopin fan, you won’t have any problem recognising, either! That means the music sounds Chopin-esque in nature, but with unexpected twists and harmonies that Hisaishi’s music is so well known for.
It also means the majority of these pieces are highly virtuosic, and require quite a bit of practice on my part!
You’ve presented pop culture music before, having played games scores for your Worlds Connected event. So what do you have to say to people who think film and game music is, in any way, inferior to “classical” music? (The struggle is real!)
I couldn’t tell you how often I get looks of complete bewilderment and surprise when I tell someone who isn’t into modern video games or anime that I’m putting on solo piano concerts of these works.
An average non-gamer thinks the video game music still sounds like the somewhat annoying and repetitive electronic noise from the Super Mario days, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.
These scores are now recorded in studios by the best musicians and orchestras in the world, and the rapidly increasing global concerts are a true testament to that!
I’m so passionate about film and video game music that I’m proud to say I’ve converted a few non-believers; quite a few of them thanks to my previous concert!
You’ll be inviting audience members to cosplay, dressing up as their favourite Studio Ghibli characters. So…who will you appear as?
As much as I would love to dress up in a Totoro onesie, for the sake of comfort, and out of respect for the Ghibli mascot, that might be a little impractical.
I wore a beautiful Alannah Hill cocktail dress for my last concert, and quite a few people asked me afterwards if I was meant to be a Chocobo (a large ostrich-like bird from Final Fantasy) due to the feather embellishments! I wasn’t; it was just a happy coincidence!
I invite the audience to dress up because I want them to be as much or as little involved as they wish to be! Everyone loves a fancy dress party, so it’s their chance to do something fun for the occasion.
At the end of the day, what do you hope your concert achieves? Would you like to challenge the divide between classical and contemporary concertgoers? Spread the music of Hisaishi? Or are you just being yourself and having a fantastic time?
Being someone who is classically trained from an early age, and comes from a Russian background — very serious and traditional artistic values — I think the classical music has a very important place in our culture and in our musical upbringing. However there is so much new, beautiful, and exciting music out there these days that it shouldn’t be looked down upon by the traditional classical music snobs (we all know the type). My aim as a musician has always been to make the listener feel something. I’ve made people cry with my playing, and I truly believe it’s because I feel the music deep in my soul when I play it, which makes the listener feel it, too.
Hisaishi’s music is so rich and emotional that I am quite often at a loss for words when I try to describe how it affects me. It’s such an overwhelming feeling that I absolutely need to share with the world, and I can only hope that my interpretation of this incredible music does it some justice!
Natalya Plays Music from Studio Ghibli at 7.30pm August 3, The Concourse. Give the works a listen in the preview below.
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Totoro captured by Bing Cheng LIN via Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0. Images of Natalya supplied. Stephanie by Graziano di Martino.
