Princess Mononoke (1997) is set in a mythic late-medieval Japan of iron foundries and forest gods. The young prince Ashitaka, cursed while killing a boar god maddened by hatred, travels west and finds himself caught between the people stripping the forest and the wolf-raised girl San who defends it, a story Hayao Miyazaki refuses to resolve into simple sides. Joe Hisaishi's music met that scale with his grandest and grimmest writing for Miyazaki to that point.

The film score, recorded with the Tokyo City Philharmonic and crowned by the countertenor Yoshikazu Mera, was built from short cues and touched with synthesizer. A year later Hisaishi returned to the material and recast it as this Symphonic Suite, eight movements performed by the Czech Philharmonic under Mario Klemens, purely orchestral, with the composer at the piano. Freed from the timings of the screen, the cues are lengthened and joined into a single arc, closer to a symphonic poem than to a soundtrack.

It opens with The Legend of Ashitaka, drum and low strings gathering into a theme of departure and destiny; Tatari Gami seethes with the curse before the woodwinds open onto something warmer. Through The Journey to the West and The Forest of the Deer God the orchestra moves between wonder and menace, the requiem movements darken, and the work closes on Ashitaka and San, the score's most tender theme, drawn out at last to its full length.

One of three Mononoke editions Studio Ghibli has brought to vinyl, alongside the Image Album and the film Soundtrack, none issued on the format before. Remastered, with new artwork and liner notes.