Yasunori Mitsuda interview; have we seen this one before? Wow, so we only ever hear 20% of what Mitsuda has in mind. Does he skim the cream of the crop, or are there great symphonies that he's been forced to hide from us for sheer lack of ROM and ISO space?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5ZfzqvZINQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmMQNl6UOQc
Ah, thanks for those! I had read about this interview some time ago, but I'd never actually seen it for myself. Now I understand that nagging comment made by someone on the Compendium that Mitsuda felt as if today he couldn't match the power of his own work from that era. That was a misstatement of what he actually said, leaving out the fact that he feels this way because of changing in the culture of music rather than internal changes.
Listening to the medley as it was played in the background of this interview, I couldn't help but notice that Yasunori Mitsuda reminds me a lot of George Gershwin in that he is an outstanding melodist but a poor orchestrator. His orchestral arrangement of these songs reveals his lack of ability when it comes to awakening the full color of the orchestra. Gershwin, as you may have known (or not!), only wrote the piano version of his famous
Rhapsody in Blue; the orchestral version was arranged by one of his colleagues, and that orchestral version is key to the piece's enduring success. In contrast with the orchestral
Rhapsody, you can hear for yourself just how primitively Mitsuda approaches his own orchestration. Truly, orchestration is one of those things that is difficult to learn and more difficult still to master.
