Beethoven Digital Symphonies

I think it’s realy a great thing and I hope it will be possible that friends of classical music which are not professionals musicians, but which perfectly have the feeling, will be in the position to conduct their own concert - as a vision. I am sure more people will have access to the wide variety of classical music and are getting educated to understand, which is now not the case because of lack of education tools. There are more people than the West-Europeans and there are more Lang Langs undiscovered which will make the world brighter and more human if their can express their hidden skills. The professional musician will enjoy more attention and respect when a wider group of people understand to benefit from classic music. Herbert v. Karajan did make the first step – this could be the second and larger one - and I hope the first concert happens in China - where everybody loves the golden concert hall in Vienna - the opening should be in the Shanghai of the Northeast - in Shenyang (birthplace of Ozawa and Lang Lang).

An foreign expert in China - grown up in Salzburg.

Hi Paul,

I came across your site purely by accident and was amazed at what you’ve accomplished so far. It’s super that you’re keeping our memories of great classical composers and their music, fresh. Congratulations on all your hard work.

Best regards,
Shez

Hi, I think, that the idea is really great. I do classic recordings since almost three years, using applications like Finale, Miroslav Philharmonik, Logic and so on, and the results, as my listeners say, are quite audible and come quite close to a “true” orchestra. The great advantage of recording with virtual instruments is, that ambitious musicians, like me, get the chance to experiment and work with an “orchestra”, which they normally are not able to afford, just because of the costs or of the lacking of 50, 60 or more musicians. I would even say, that Bach, Beethoven or many others, if they lived today, would too take the chance to produce their compositions on a Mac to hear how it would sound and then perform it (even with a virtual orchestra). And, as Paul Henry said, if you are not a good musician, the “virtual” music would always sound artificial or, in Paul Henry’s words a non-violinist trying to play a Stradivari or a non-pianist playing on a Bechstein. Just a last remark: I’m not afraid, that “true” musicians will die out. If ever possible I go to “real” concerts (heard Lang-Lang about 2 or 3 weeks ago, here in Bad-Kissingen[Germany]), and I’m sure many other “virtual” musicians do so too. I think it’s just like the thing between TV and cinemas. 10 or 15 years ago, a lot of people talked about the end of the movie-industrie and of cinemas. Well, since then, it came, that we have bigger, and more cinemas than ever and millions of people running to see the new “you know who” movie. Give a chance to everyone to do something new and let’s just wait, what will happen.
Greets from Germany.

Greetings from yet another brazilian composer.
I also bumped across the site by accident, and I found the whole idea quite attractive. It has the same bizarre kind of beauty as the LOGOS foundation in Belgium (which manages to be even more absurd - I hope you understand that, coming from me, “absurd” is actually a compliment).
I must say, however, that despite what Spiegel Online said, the difference is perceivable indeed. Personally I’ve always been very enthusiastic about the use of technology in music, but I also never thought highly of its use in attempts to imitate “real life” sounds - an obvious idea which sprang up from the very beginning and eventually led to things like those terrible “synth strings” that the 80’s were so fond of. On the other hand, I always found the degree of precision and control offered by electronic tools very suitable to create sounds and music that CANNOT be reproduced acoustically or by human performers. To me, in this sense, the first great digital orchestra conductor was, undisputably, Frank Zappa (too bad he couldn’t live up to this point). I suppose you are already familiar with his work with the Synclavier, if not I strongly suggest checking his last and highest achievement in digital orchestra conducting, “Civilization Phaze III”.
Anyway, seeing how much work and artistic vision you guys put into the whole project, I would never dare to dismiss it as mere “cute gimmicks” or whatever. Considering that today’s instruments, orchestras and concert halls are indeed lightyears apart from those in the 18th century - and that the further we try, the farther we are from knowing what these actually sounded like - I don’t see why this can’t be seen as a new and legitimate form of interpreting and performing music. It’s still far from being perfect, though; the best recording I heard on your site (I must admit I haven’t heard all of them though) was that of Debussy’s “Jeux de Vagues”, but of course I still prefer Boulez’s. I should add only that I’d set as a much higher goal (and an even greater challenge) to do the same with Mahler’s 9 Symphonies - plus, of course, the Adagio from the 10th. I hope to hear that within, maybe, the next couple of years!
Anyway, congratulations to everyone involved in the project, your whole conception is thrilling and very promising. I totally agree with the anonymous fellow above, and I’ll be sure to compose something for the Fauxharmonic myself, as soon as I can afford it. Something that “real life” orchestras probably won’t be able to play anyway.
All the best,
Martin
(PS: Maybe you could consider Zappa’s symphonic and chamber works later - especially those which never had a decent and well-rehearsed premiere).

Oh, I must also suggest listening in headphones to Zappa’s “London Symphony Orchestra” album, conducted by Kent Nagano - the first digital multitrack recording of a (real) symphony orchestra, ever. Each group of instruments was recorded into a separate track (I think he used 40 mic’s or so) and all of the ambience (which also varies according to each section of the music) was added digitally. The sound is amazing, when you listen to it in headphones it’s almost like sitting in the middle of the orchestra (though unfortunately the performance itself still sounds somewhat under-rehearsed)…

Dear Paul, with no hesitation, I prefer your performance of the Beethoven’s, Op. 59, Finale to that of the Prazak Quartet. Unlike Prazak, your quartet remains clean no matter what the sound level or how many musical lines are played together.
Best wishes,
Mark

Your “performances” sound no more like music than it would sound like speech if you recorded someone saying every syllable in the English language and then strung them together.

NPH, You mean like this?

Listen

Yes, exactly. Doesn’t flow or sound natural at all, does it?

Now I see what you mean. I thought you were saying it doesn’t sound like music, but I took that, perhaps, too literally.

Getting this “flow” or “natural” sound is one of the biggest problems with making music this way. None of the recordings linked to above have any sort of natural flow or tempo fluctuations. They’re all put in manually, “off-line,” and not part of the real-time performance. That just doesn’t work very well. At least not for me.

Fortunately, I do have a way to play the music naturally, adjusting tempo, loudness and tone-color (among other things) on the fly in response to the sounds unfolding in a room. Exactly as I would do on my cello.

You can hear an example of this here:

Beethoven Op. 59, No. 3 - Finale

It’s much more natural … I guess by definition it IS natural, since it’s a real human being playing the music as it happens. It still needs work, though. I’m never really satisfied with these recordings. Performing in a hall is MUCH better.