Fantasy Worlds Benyamin Nuss

• Nobuo Uematsu (b. 1959):
• 1Run!03:59
• 2Theme of Love04:53
• Benyamin Nuss (b. 1989):
• 3À Hitoshi Sakimoto00:58
• Hitoshi Sakimoto (b. 1969):
• 4Eruyt Village04:53
• 5Giza Plains04:10
• Benyamin Nuss:
• 6À Masayoshi Soken01:50
• Masayoshi Soden:
• 7Kugane05:30
• Benyamin Nuss:
• 8À Yoko Shimomura01:44
• Yoko Shimomura (b. 1967):
• 9Somnus05:04
• Benyamin Nuss:
• 10À Masashi Hamauzu01:57
• Masashi Hamauzu (b. 1971):
• 11Improvisation over "Dust to Dust"03:15
• 12Knight of Goddess05:41
• 13Fantasy over Hauyns Theme05:41
• Benyamin Nuss:
• 14À Nobuo Uematsu03:04
• Nobuo Uematsu:
• 15Chocobo Variations08:59
• 16Eyes on Me06:20
• Total Runtime01:07:58

Info for Fantasy Worlds

On the album "Fantasy Worlds", Benyamin Nuss presents his interpretations of works by legendary video game composer Nobuo Uematsu, who was named one of the 100 musical innovators of our time by TIME magazine. The deep emotionality is what makes this solo piano album so unique. "The music in Final Fantasy tells stories, creates characters and scenes. This increases the immersion of the players, who are equally captivated by the music and the game and lose themselves in the digital world," says Benyamin Nuss.

Benyamin Nuss began piano lessons at the age of six. He was inspired and encouraged by his father, trombonist Ludwig Nuss, and his brother Hubert, a pianist - both internationally renowned jazz musicians and composers. Thus Benyamin not only grows up with the music of different genres but makes classical music and jazz his passion. He studies at the Musikhochschule Cologne and lives his passion for music - in the conservatory, at piano concerts and on tour with jazz bands. At home and abroad Benyamin performs as a soloist with various top orchestras, from Berlin to Stockholm and London to Tokyo and Chicago.

"Today, thousands of people are captivated by the enchanting 'Final Fantasy' melodies in legendary concert halls such as the Kölner Philharmonie, the Royal Albert Hall or Carnegie Hall," says Nuss. "I have never experienced an audience like this in any other genre before. While the music is playing, it is quiet as a mouse and highly concentrated. Shortly after the final chord, thunderous applause sounds like in a rock concert".

Benyamin Nuss, piano

Benyamin Nuss
Born in 1989, Benyamin Nuss lives his passion for music. Inspired and encouraged by his father Ludwig Nuss and his uncle Hubert, both renowned jazz musicians and composers, Benyamin not only grew up within the tense area between classical music and jazz, but also completely turned the two genres into his passions.

Even as a ten-year-old, he began engaging himself with the works of Debussy and Ravel. It was above all the Impressionists who at first fascinated him with their tones and harmonies, then he found himself drawn more and more to the Romantics; Rachmaninoff, Liszt and Chopin are today among his favourite composers.

How deeply Benyamin internalized their music is also demonstrated by his first prizes at the national Jugend musiziert (Young Musicians) in the Steinway Competition (2005) and the international Prix d'Amadeo de Piano competition (2006), as well as a grant from the Hochbegabtenstiftung (Foundation for the Gifted) Best of NRW. Since 2008, he has studied at the Cologne/Aachen University of Music. His debut album Nuss plays Uematsu (2010, Deutsche Grammophon) contains video game music in a classical context and went straight into the classical charts. This was followed in 2012 by another solo album Exotica (Deutsche Grammophon), featuring works by Debussy, Balakirev, Milhaud, Villa-Lobos and Ginastera, as well as his own compositions. At home and abroad, Benyamin has performed as a soloist with several leading orchestras in Cologne, Stockholm, Tokyo, Chicago and London.

On this present production Masashi Hamauzu (Mons Records), he plays in a trio for the first time with Lisa Schumann (violin) and Kana Shirao (cello), as well as solo piano on the compositions of the Japanese Masashi Hamauzu. These two exceptional musicians are not only connected by a shared musical passion, but also by amazing biographical parallels.

Masashi Hamauzu
The Japanese Masashi Hamauzu is a composer of classical music. His work is inspired by Impressionists such as Debussy and Ravel, and yet at the same time he is compared to the works of "Les Six", a group of six French composers united in their reaction against romantic Impressionism, and who celebrated a change towards contemporary forms of popular music.

Caught between these stylistic divergences, Hamauzu has managed a remarkable career.

His musical repertoire encompasses both large orchestral works, and intimate chamber music concerts and compositions for solo piano, in equal measure. A completed course in vocal studies encouraged the widening of his views on structurally experimental possibilities, and enabled him to confidently transcend and expand the horizons of the classical music traditions.

After completing his studies, Masashi Hamauzu established his career as a staff composer at Square Enix, a leading developer of video games that included the Final Fantasy series. His dramatic compositional approach, coupled with his pioneering use of choral methods, modern harmonies and orchestration, let him break free from established forms and helped video game music attain an unprecedented level of status. With the soundtracks for Final Fantasy XIII, SaGa Frontier 2, Final Fantasy X, Unlimited Saga and Sigma Harmonics, to name just a few, he attracted worldwide attention and unreserved approval far beyond the boundaries of the game-playing community. His compositions are performed around the world in both a variety of orchestral settings and as solo piano concerts.

This album contains no booklet.