Genshin Concert Düsseldorf: A beautiful fan experience

I was all the more blown away by what the orchestra managed to put together while missing the majority of these specialist instruments, so whoever did the arrangement for Junge Philharmonie Köln had done a fabulous job. I don’t know much about music in a technical sense and, frankly, I lack any knack for rhythm whatsoever, so I can’t comment too much on that side of things – I’ll leave that to the music critics.

A few unfortunate changes to the original material that somewhat lessened its impact were large enough to be noted even by me: Rex Incognito – the Zhongli character trailer theme – lacked its characteristic drop entirely, which was a bit of a bummer, and the lack of an electric guitar for some pieces hurt as well. I also was a bit saddened that no actual accordion could be found for the Fontaine pieces, given that it’s a staple instrument in some regions of Germany and our neighbor France.

Personally, I had a fantastic seat basically right in front of the stage, so the acoustics were perfect for me, but I heard from other people that it wasn’t like this in the entire hall. Though the location hosts many music events, it’s not built as a concert hall and designed to carry the sounds of an orchestra, so that seems to have been an issue.

The orchestra did include a Chinese zither – I believe it’s called a Guzheng – with an awesome musician, who really did some heavy lifting in the Liyue and Inazuma parts. Truly an amazing sounding instrument with a surprising amount of range.

Speaking of surprises: I did not expect one of my absolute favorite pieces of the OST, Hustle and Bustle of Ormos, to make it into the setlist and to sound so good. Where the lack of the right instrumentation made some pieces sound slightly incomplete or off to someone who listened to the soundtrack a lot, the Port Ormos theme had this astounding quality of being both on point when compared to the original as well as sounding fresh due to the instruments used. It was a truly incredible rendition of the song and the audience loved it – we went wild as soon as we heard the first few notes.

The audience, of course, was pretty great. People seemed to have come from all over the world to Germany for this event. There even was a sizable portion of Chinese fans, who went bananas for some of the Liyue OST. That was really the turning point of the concert – while we all love the Mondstadt OST in our hearts (it’s where we all got started, after all), it didn’t quite get us going in the same way as the later pieces, so the start felt a little bit slow sometimes aside from Venti’s character trailer theme and the Stormterror battle theme. But Liyue? Banger after banger. That really woke the people up for Inazuma, Sumeru, and Fontaine. Overall, it was a strong selection of tracks, though the character themes got the short end of the stick numbers-wise.

I met a friend in the afternoon ahead of the concert, who asked me if I’d wear a suit. I told him it wasn’t that kind of orchestra performance and that I’d bet there’d be more people cosplaying as characters from the game than there would be people in formal attire – and boy, I would have won that bet in a landslide. To all the cosplayers who braved the cold, patiently took pictures with everyone, and made attendees really feel like it was a Genshin family meet-up: You’re awesome, doing the Archons’ work!

Both the music and atmosphere were stellar in my book and I would recommend any Genshin Impact fan to attend one of these concerts if they ever have the chance – a wonderful experience through and through.

Despite Germany’s reputation for order, the organization could best be described as chaotic. You can’t avoid long queues out in the cold at this time of year for a packed event, of course, so there is no issue with that. 

What sucked a little was the organization of the merchandise stand – it’s a Genshin Impact event, so you know people will go wild for merch – which had no dedicated lines. People queuing for it quickly devolved into a mob that impeded everyone else’s way through the foyer to the hall. Naturally, there was nowhere near enough merch to give everyone a chance at buying something as well, which left a lot of people a bit disappointed.

Things were a little better with the commemorative ticket and the exclusive redemption code you could get – they had a stand with a dedicated line for those and marked people’s tickets to avoid scalpers going for seconds and thirds, which was great, but I wonder if they couldn’t have simply given this stuff out during the initial entry procedure: You know, have someone scan the ticket to let people in as normal and then have someone extra behind them to give them their goodies right away. This would have avoided the absolute mess that was the exit procedure, where you had people who wanted to leave the building collide with the people who went in the other direction to queue up in order to still receive their commemorative items. It was a bit messy.

It’s a good thing that the Genshin Impact community is so chill – a different crowd might have turned things into another direction entirely.

Despite the small imperfections, I loved every moment about that evening and would attend another Genshin Concert in a heartbeat – it really was a musical journey through this magical experience that everyone in that hall shared to some extent, which created a beautiful bond between all the people in attendance, no matter their background and situation.

That’s the power of music and video games, baby!