Eh... As a moderately frequent concertgoer, I don't recognise much of this. Possibly regionally specific, but in London, a ticket to a big-ticket repertoire symphony with the LSO or whatever can be had for about £10, and a pretty nice seat for £25-30, which is about what I paid to see Nile and Suffocation, surely more niche than Mahler, and probably half what you need to see a big pop act. (Opera is eye-gougingly expensive, though.) The orchestra dresses formally, the audience doesn't (unless they want to). Silence between movements is observed, however, which sort of freaks me out.
I'm ambivalent about the video game music thing, simply because what works in one setting doesn't necessarily work in another. A game score's primary virtue is to withstand repetition and respond to non-deterministic events (which may be a more interesting way to approach a VGM concert than just a tour of Final Fantasy's 'greatest hits' or whatever; certainly there are precedents in the post-war avant garde for that kind of thing). A symphony proper is designed ground-up for the sort of setting in which you are likely to hear it - an acoustically-tuned concert hall, with a highly-trained band of musicians extracting every bit of dynamic range and expressive potential out of their instruments. There's nothing quite like it when it works (there is also nothing quite like, since I've mentioned it, death metal, or techno, or ...)
The problem with 'high-culture' institutions going for populism is that it can be done in a really shallow, instrumentalist way: the VGM concert as the loss leader for Schoenberg frankly isn't going to do any favours to the VGM. It has to be treated seriously, or it won't even be fun - not used as a gateway drug for what the orchestra/concert hall really wants you to listen to.
I'm ambivalent about the video game music thing, simply because what works in one setting doesn't necessarily work in another. A game score's primary virtue is to withstand repetition and respond to non-deterministic events (which may be a more interesting way to approach a VGM concert than just a tour of Final Fantasy's 'greatest hits' or whatever; certainly there are precedents in the post-war avant garde for that kind of thing). A symphony proper is designed ground-up for the sort of setting in which you are likely to hear it - an acoustically-tuned concert hall, with a highly-trained band of musicians extracting every bit of dynamic range and expressive potential out of their instruments. There's nothing quite like it when it works (there is also nothing quite like, since I've mentioned it, death metal, or techno, or ...)
The problem with 'high-culture' institutions going for populism is that it can be done in a really shallow, instrumentalist way: the VGM concert as the loss leader for Schoenberg frankly isn't going to do any favours to the VGM. It has to be treated seriously, or it won't even be fun - not used as a gateway drug for what the orchestra/concert hall really wants you to listen to.