It is every orchestral player’s greatest anxiety dream. You are sitting on stage at the Royal Festival Hall as the Philharmonia’s Principal Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen strides up to the podium. He looks you directly in the eye and raises his baton for the first downbeat. It is only then that you realise you have forgotten your instrument, or even how to play one. But this is not a dream – it’s real. Or virtually real. Welcome to Britain’s first fully immersive, 360 degree, non-existent orchestra.
Cyber-orchestras seem to be gaining traction at the moment, though the Philharmonia’s project is a very different beast from the BBC’s Virtual Orchestra, which invited the contribution of more than 1,000 amateur musicians to the Last Night of the Proms via their smartphones. Instead, it pitches the viewer into the heart of a top-flight, professional ensemble as it performs the final movement of Sibelius’s fifth symphony.
The realism of the experience, developed by the Philharmonia in association with London-based VR specialists Inition, is extraordinary. You sense the tension build while wandering backstage, watching musicians tune amid catering tables and the alien sarcophagi of the double-bass cases. Then there’s the intensity of the performance itself, which feels more like going into battle than listening to a concert. The proximity of bows and trombone slides is so close it’s impossible not to flinch. Finally you arrive at Sibelius’s great, slashing conclusion of six massive chords punctuated by silence. The whites-of-the-eyes perspective gives Salonen the almost-maniacal look of an emperor pronouncing execution.
The seamless, latency-free production is an indication of how far VR technology has developed since the initial, clunky headsets that tended to leave the user feeling slightly nauseous. Now that anyone with a well-specced smartphone has access the VR experience, orchestras are scrambling to gain a purchase on the new platform.
The pioneer in the US has been the LA Philharmonic, which last year launched the VAN Beethoven project – a VR-equipped articulated truck that simulated the experience of sitting in the Walt Disney concert hall. Both the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Toronto Symphony Orchestrahave experimented with VR performances accessible on YouTube. But in the UK, the Philharmonia has been leading the charge, not least due to the fact that its principal conductor admits to being a bit of a geek.
“Unashamedly and proudly,” Salonen declares. “I’m the tech companies’ idea of a perfect victim because I buy everything. But it was when I tried one of the new Samsung headsets for the first time that the potential for orchestral music became apparent. It seems to me that we are at an equivalent point in history to the birth of the long-playing record. This is not a gimmick. It will become a significant means by which music is consumed within the very near future.”
The Philharmonia has been at the leading edge of new media since it was founded in 1945 by EMI producer Walter Legge as an in-house recording ensemble. In 2012 it became the first UK orchestra to develop its own app, which gave multi-camera views of the players alongside interactive scores and commentaries. This was followed by the Universe of Sound, a 37-screen installation based on Holst’s Planets Suite, whose sequence of rooms enabled you to play percussion, edit the score or even take over from Salonen himself, using motion-capture technology to follow the conductor’s beat.
The Universe of Sound was first seen at the National Science Museum in 2012 and has since toured the world. Until 2 October it is installed at the Royal Festival Hall as part of a two-week residency by the Philharmonia’s Virtual Orchestra.
,
Source: The Guardian