September is a special month for children in Costa Rica, and the celebrations continue on Thursday 26^th and Friday 27^th as the National Symphonic Orchestra, directed by special guest conductor Emannuel Olivieri, will perform classical arrangements of music from video games. The concerts will start at 10:00 a.m. in the Melico Salazar Theater in downtown San Jose.

Classical music purists and snobs, as well as some video game haters, may scoff at the idea of the esteemed Symphonic Orchestra of Costa Rica playing the main theme of Angry Birds in full instrumental chamber regalia, but the fact is that classical music and video games have a long history. Going back to the days of Microsoft’s Disk Operating System (MS-DOS), games such as Dark Legions featured crude chip-based renditions of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude Op. 3 No. 2.

Composers Joel McNeely and Michael Giacchino from the United States are major figures in the orchestral music scene. They are known for their respective Stars Wars: Shadows of the Empire and Medal of Honor series original scores, recorded by renowned performers such as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The ground-breaking Grand Theft Auto 3 game featured a classical music station, and Gran Turismo 5 focuses on piano pieces from Beethoven, Chopin and Tchaikovsky.

In 2004, the Philharmonic of Los Angeles began a special tour that featured arrangements of video game chip tunes such as the themes from Nintendo’s Zelda and Mario Brothers series, which in turn were created by masterful Japanese composers who were only limited by the primitive sound chips and sound cards of the time. On this tour, a member of the audience was randomly selected to play Space Invaders on a giant display as the Philharmonic played menacing music in sync with the rapid advance of 8-bit aliens down the screen.

The melodious work of Japanese composer Koichi Sugiyama for Dragon Quest so attracted instrumental composers that in 1986 the London Philharmonic recorded an album of his music; you can just imagine the dismay that the hoity-toity classical music snobs and video game haters experienced when this happened.

The moment in which classical music will forever become ensconced in the world of video games was June 14, 2007. On that day, a Japanese video game entitled Eternal Sonata hit the market and took everyone by surprise. Eternal Sonata not only features the music of Chopin, it was actually based on parts of his tragic life and was extremely educational. That game convinced people that children can actually learn about classical music through video games.

Listening to the National Symphonic Orchestra of Costa Rica play music from video games will only set you back 3,000 colones (about $6). Tickets are now on sale at the box office of the Melico Salazar Theatre in the lovable city of San Jose, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (closed for lunch from noon to 1:00 p.m.)