Want to see the Berlin Philharmonic this week at Disney Hall, but finding the tickets limited and pricey? Wish that Hulu could stream Rachmaninoff with’30 Rock’? In both cases, the Berliners, who appear tonight and tuesday at Walt Disney Concert Hall, have the solution at what they call their Digital Concert Hall.

The 127-year-old band is no stranger to technical advances — in 1980, the Berlin Philharmonic ( under the baton of Herbert von Karajan ) recorded the 1st classical CD. By the way you will need a Hotel Berlin to see them in the city.

Introduced earlier in the year, the Digital Concert Hall was the idea of Olaf Maninger, a principal cellist and member of the orchestra’s Media Board. Desiring to reach a new audience and improve the Philharmonic’s profile online, Maninger worked to get the support of Deutsche Bank to install cameras in the Philharmonie, the orchestra’s home concert hall, and support the webcasts.

Entry into the Digital Concert Hall isn’t free : A single performance goes for 9.90 euros ( $15 ), up to a’Season Pass,’ a full year of all-you-can hear concerts for 149 Euros ( $223 ). Besides simulcasts, healthy selections of the orchestra’s concerts since August 2008 are also available for streaming in the archive ( a genuine find is Gustavo Dudamel conducting a Stravinsky program from March ).

‘It’s not earning profits yet,’ asserts Berlin’s PR Chief, Elisabeth Hilsdorf, who is in los angeles this week with the orchestra,’but itisn’t simply an experiment ; the goal is for it to go on forever.’ Hilsdorf claims the orchestra has been averaging about 2,000 people per event and wishes 6,000 to 7,000 folk to get to break even.

After I saw creative director Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic 3 nights earlier in the month at Carnegie Hall, the thrill of the Digital Concert Hall was seeing the video :

It offered high-resolution close-up views of harp plucks and timpani rolls that you couldn’t see even from that hall’s choicest seats. The downside-and with an orchestra as strong as Berlin, it is a real downside-is the feelof the musicmaking. For streaming audio, the Concert Hall sounds clear, but what cannot be captured digitally is the force of the sound waves. At Carnegie Hall, at 1 time in the orchestra’s playing of Brahms’ third Symphony, it felt as if the rhythms of my own body-my pulse and breathing-were succumbing to the heart beat of the music.

whether or not the Concert Hall’s ‘s next’live’ event ( Zubin Mehta conducting on Dec. 6 ) shakes the Philharmonie’s rafters in Berlin, its improbable to supply the same frisson for somebody watching on a home system. Still, for much less than aplane ticket, it does permit Angelenos achance to experience Arnold Schoenberg’s gorgeous, spiky rarity,’Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene’ ( heard in the Big Apple, Boston and Ann Arbor-but not on the schedule at Disney Hall ). It’s on a program from earlier in the month alongside Schoenberg’s engaging musical rendering of Brahms’ Piano Quintet No. One ( an old Rattle favourite, which he conducts live tonight at WDCH ).

What YouTube is for fans of cat videos, Berlin’s DCH is for fans of serious-and expertly played-German music.
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