Classical Music meets Video Art

Audiovisual Concert Series of the Philharmonic State Orchestra Now Online

Zbig Rybczynski and Dorota Zglobicka were invited by Georges Delnon and Kent Nagano - the conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra in Germany to create four video art pieces for the program “Songs of the Earth” which is a part of Micro Concert series.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

With their Micro concerts, the conductor Kent Nagano and the Philharmonic took advantage of the time of the pandemic to explore new methods of digital music dissemination and listening. In cooperation with international video artists, a cycle of five audiovisual concert programmers responds to the times of crisis. After being streamed exclusively by Radio France, the videos are now available for online viewing on the channels of the Philharmonic State Orchestra and the Hamburg State Opera.

In five compact concert programs lasting approximately half an hour each, Kent Nagano has combined brief works of music in in thematic blocks corresponding to the phases of the pandemic over the past two years. Georges Delnon chose international video artists to visualize these five programs: Luis August Krawen, Jonas Englert, Zbig Rybczyński/Dorota Zglobicka, Kamila B. Richter/Michael Bielicky, and Virgil Widrich. “We didn’t want to produce the nth streamed concerts, but offer viewers new images, leaving space for associative imagination,” Georges Delnon, Artistic Director of the Orchestra and Opera, describes the project’s visual concept. Elements including avatars such as an animated Kent Nagano, distorted footage of the orchestra, webcam recordings and “found footage” lend some of the music a completely new horizon, for the listener’s and viewer’s benefit.

A QUOTE FROM KENT NAGANO

“The Micro concerts are a kind of musical UFO, not resembling any known project. Each concert transports a message and tells a story showing how deeply music is rooted in society today – a special project, modern in structure and form, that could only have happened during the pandemic. The visualization makes each Micro concert a real creation,” says Kent Nagano.

A QUOTE FROM ZBIG AND DOROTA

“For us, It was an honor and a great pleasure to create a compilation of four surreal visual art in cooperation with one of the greatest Philharmonic in Europe.” said Dorota and Zbig

ABOUT THE MUSIC

25 works, including music by Widmann, Schumann, Beethoven, Bach, Villa-Lobos, Dutilleux and Xenakis, were recorded. Nagano and the Philharmonic are joined by high-carat guests: Klaus Florian Vogt sings Mahler’s Von der Jugend and Katharina Konradi, Jana Kurucová and Georg Nigl interpret Ligeti’s avant-garde Nouvelles aventures. Members of the Hamburg State Opera ensemble, such as Hellen Kwon, Gabriele Rossmanith, Kristina Stanek, Kady Evanyshyn and Bernhard Hansky, sing works by Bartók and Schoenberg, and invited ensembles such as the Harvestehude Chamber Choir and the Rundfunkchor Berlin are heard in pieces by Brahms and Schoenberg.

Songs of the Earth (26:42)

ABOUT VIDEOS BY ZBIG AND DOROTA

Visuals: Zbig Rybczyński & Dorota Zglobicka

Music: Gustav Mahler, Leoš Janáček, Béla Bartók, Arnold Schoenberg

Performers: Kent Nagano, Klaus Florian Vogt, Hellen Kwon, Gabriele Rossmanith, Kristina Stanek, Kady Evanyshyn, Rupert Burleigh, Rundfunkchor Berlin, Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg

Cast: Reanna Lee, Andres Silva, Jaclyn Mona, Peter Lucas, Brian Friedberg, Fernanda Velasquez

Costume design by: Theo Doro

Making of music by: Freddy J. Walker

Filmed at: Gila Monster Studios, Arizona, Usa

SEE MAKING OF HERE:

SHORT SYNOPSIS

DIGI DADA “Songs of the Earth” is a compilation of a four-part surreal Video-Art. Created for classical music masterpieces composed by Gustav Mahler, Leos Janacek, Bela Bartok, and Arnold Schoenberg performed by Kent Nagano, and the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra in Germany. Filmed in Arizona at Gila Monster Studios and on location.

We see how all four videos play with time, dance, space, and time shifting. Bartok is the cinematic “pas de deux” of a contemporary dance performed by two dancers, kind of a poetic interpretation of a human connection with the earth. SHE and HE dance their hearts out to bring some rain to the thirsty desert. Their performance is to varying degrees accelerated and time-shifted. Paradoxically, the distorted dance of these characters is also synchronized with the music, but in a different way.

In order to achieve this effect, special computer software was created for measuring differences in the volume and intensity of the recorded music and converting them into the time shift seen in the film's images. All the effects seen in Schoenberg and Mahler videos involved lots of coding as well.

WHERE TO WATCH MICRO-CONCERT SERIES

The Micro concerts are all available on-demand online until October 22, 2022, via www.staatsorchester-hamburg.de/en/microconcerts via www.youtube.com/PhilharmonikerHH as well as www.radiofrance.fr/francemusique