Hisaishi in Noble LED Light

Let a hundred flowers bloom. Or let thousands of candles burn, as is customary during the Candlelight Concerts that Fever organizes all over the world. In Brussels, the prestigious Concert Noble was set ablaze for the arrival of Trio Audelia and the animated music of Joe Hisaishi, virtually the only true in-house composer of Studio Ghibli.

Sounds exotic? It is. Studio Ghibli is virtually the Japanese counterpart of Disney: a particularly successful producer of animated films, but with a shorter track record and a mythical, chinchilla-like forest spirit instead of a cheerful mouse as a mascot. The iconic studio owes much of its success to Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of the company in 1985 and by far the most important creative mind. Miyazaki wrote and directed Spirited Away (2002), a gem that won both the Golden Bear and the Oscar for best animated film. Quite an achievement, right in Mickey and Minnie's backyard!

At Ghibli too, a rock-solid tandem played the leading role for decades, but behind the scenes, where Miyazaki relied almost exclusively on his compatriot Mamoru Fujisawa, better known as Joe Hisaishi (°1950), for film music—his most Americanized nom de plume. The intense collaboration between the two has sometimes been compared to that between Steven Spielberg and his preferred composer John Williams, and yielded an extensive song catalogue. From Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), an epic eco-fable from Topcraft—the direct predecessor of Studio Ghibli—through Castle in the Sky (1986), the first feature film, to The Wind Rises (2013), still Miyazaki's swan song to date: Hisaishi's melodies—at times naive, then enchanting or soothing—are guaranteed to stick in the ears of young and old alike.

Fire-safe experiences

It was therefore no surprise to find a strikingly younger audience in the stately ballroom of the Concert Noble, alongside portraits of crowned heads. Across the geometric parquet, groups of friends and parents with their children shuffled carefully to their assigned seats. Their path was lit by thousands of candles. According to the announcer, there were five thousand, and they were indeed everywhere: on the stage, around the dance floor, on top of the stucco work, and at the beginning of each row of seats. No wax candles or real flames to worry about—all flickering LED lights that made fire insurance unnecessary. Outside, the European Quarter was still bathed in full daylight—the concert started at 6:30 p.m.—but inside hung an atmospheric twilight.

"As you may have seen or heard, our Candlelight Concerts are created with the goal of opening the genre of classical music to different audiences. That challenge seems to be met: more than 70% of the participants in the concerts are under 40 years old and most of them had never attended a classical music concert before", such was Fever's equally noble and luminous statement about their answer to my question about tickets. Fever is a company headquartered in New York with branch offices in Madrid and London. The social platform saw the light, well, in 2012. Inspiring people through experiences is the tagline, and over the past ten years it has been accomplished with increasing success in various ways and places—through themed parties in LA and Liverpool, immersive exhibitions in Hamburg and Miami, and Brussels concerts in various genres. Certainly, music by cozy candlelight has proven to be a hit: "So far we were able to delight more than two million guests in more than 90 cities with performances in various spectacular places." The promotional speech was backed up by a virtually packed Concert Noble.

Gentle summer day

The playlist that the ladies of Trio Audelia had compiled was a selection from Hisaishi's oeuvre. It was up to Dorelle Sluchin, the French cellist of this Brussels-based string trio, to announce the eleven songs in brief introductions: music she had grown up with and which she had arranged for her ensemble based on existing arrangements for string quartet. Violinist Cléo Dahan and violist Elaine Ng—who was standing in for her colleague Amalija Kokeza—would also express themselves as Hisaishi fans. Not in so many words, but rather through deeds, as became clear immediately during the opening number. The simple yet beautiful melody from Always with me, the melodious end credits of Spirited Away, echoed successively at each music stand, but nowhere as beautifully as that first time in the viola. Starting with an introduction may seem an odd choice, but in this case it became an early focal point and the occasion for enthusiastic applause.

During the subsequent pieces, the peaceful path was gradually abandoned. With the theme songs from My Neighbor Totoro – that is that chinchilla-like forest spirit from above – Kiki's Delivery Service and Castle in the Sky, there was more swing and energy on stage. Striking in this regard was the frequent alternation of lively lyricism and playful pizzicato, which gave many an arrangement a recognizable stamp. Soundtracks from Princess Mononoke and Ponyo were also drawn upon, but it was again Spirited Away that received the most applause from the audience. Both the delightfully gentle One Summer's Day and the innocent waltz named after the main character Chihiro, perfectly at home in this dancing setting, were played with great feeling. Trio Audelia finally showed great flair thanks to Merry-go-Round, the charming tune from Howl's Moving Castle: a carousel that could certainly have kept turning a bit longer. For although there were a few fleeting moments when the three string players had difficulty finding each other in their ensemble playing, these pale in comparison to the animated overall picture.

The noble LED light was only definitively extinguished after an encore from Whisper of the Heart. Or how Hisaishi smuggled the breakthrough hit of American singer-songwriter John Denver into the anime, and sang to all those present in the Concert Noble: Country roads, take me home. To the place you belong…

• WHO: Trio Audelia [Cléo Dahan (violin), Elaine Ng (viola) and Dorelle Sluchin (cello)]
• WHAT: Candlelight Anime: Le meilleur de Joe Hisaishi à la bougie
• WHERE: Concert Noble, Brussels
• WHEN: Friday, June 10, 2022
• PHOTOS: © Ank Zwolle Fotografie
• ORGANISATION: Fever
• WEBSITE: Candlelight Concerts