Video game Diablo III features performance by Pacific Symphony

The Pacific Symphony performs music for an unlikely audience -- gamers battling the hellish underworlds of Diablo III.

The symphony teamed up with Irvine-based game developer Blizzard Entertainment, known for the Warcraft and Starcraft franchises, for the long-awaited third installment in the Diablo series.

More than 100 musicians recorded the score live last July in Costa Mesa’s Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall under the baton of Eímear Noone.

“It was important to give Diablo III its own sound -— not only via the compositions, but even in the manner in which it was recorded,” Blizzard Entertainment’s audio director Russell Brower said in a news release about the project. “We decided to record this score in a concert hall that relies on the oldest acoustical traditions known to humankind.

“This technique provides a subtlety to intonation, ensemble and timbre, which is not achievable via modern studio multi-track recording,” Brower added.

While several of the symphony’s musicians are seasoned studio performers -- their on-screen credits include “Avatar,” “King Kong” and the recently revived “Titanic” -- the plot of Diablo III isn’t where you might expect to hear the classical sounds of the Orange County symphony.

The hack-and-slash dungeon crawl, released Tuesday at midnight, pits heroes of a dark fantasy world against the Goliath demonic armies of the Burning Hells.

The game’s score is billed as “edgy, moody, minimalist,” but perhaps if you triumph over the dark forces, you’ll hear lighter notes like Grieg’s “Peer Gynt,” which was recently performed in another unexpected place, flash-mob style on a Copenhagen commuter train.

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