The 2 big white trailers that sit between the Royal Palace and the Royal theatre in central Madrid kind an unlikely pair of portals to a universe of boundless visible and aural risk.
However step out of the December drizzle and in by their doorways and you will see that your self crawling inside a violin, sitting in an orchestra earlier than one of the well-known conductors on the earth and bathed in a stream of lysergic pictures, all to the strains of Beethoven, Mahler and Leonard Bernstein.
After 4 years and the efforts of 250 individuals – not least these of the Venezuelan conductor and violinist Gustavo Dudamel – Symphony, a digital actuality movie meant to carry orchestral music to a brand new era of listeners, has lastly completed tuning up.
The movie is break up into two, 12-minute sections. The primary, proven on a large display screen, follows three younger musicians in Spain, the US and Colombia as they practise their devices and transfer by landscapes and soundscapes that vary from the Mediterranean coast to the streets of New York and a espresso farm on a tropical mountainside.
For the second, guests are invited into the opposite trailer, given a digital actuality headset and headphones, and urged to take go away of their senses.
The lights come as much as reveal the Mahler Chamber Orchestra on stage at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceo – of which you might be immediately half. Earlier than you stands an effervescent Dudamel, twitching and pointing his means by the primary motion of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
From that time on, the movie peels itself even additional away from actuality, immersing guests in a psychedelic digital world of intricate orchids, distant stars and roiling galaxies. Subsequent cease is a luthier’s workshop, the place the viewer turns into trapped inside a violin after which flies by the constituent elements of a trumpet.
After a trippy detour spherical a fireworked-flecked forest and Dudamel’s assertion that the sounds coaxed from wooden and steel are nothing with out the presence of true soul, you might be dropped again into you seat within the Barcelona live performance corridor after which, ultimately, to a relatively disappointing actuality.
“The elemental level is about utilizing expertise as a useful resource for connecting individuals with the essence of music – to carry them a bit of nearer to all of it visually,” mentioned Dudamel.
“We additionally need to present individuals the intimacy of the musical act – from essentially the most elemental sounds, just like the each day cacophony of noises we hear – to one of many best orchestras on the earth enjoying in one of the lovely live performance halls on the earth. It’s a complete expertise and a novel expertise.”
The venture, a collaboration between the Dudamel Basis and La Caixa Basis, is free to go to and will probably be in Madrid till 19 January. After that, it is going to start a 10-year tour of 100 cities and cities throughout Spain and Portugal.
Symphony was initially meant to debut in April, however, like a lot else, was delayed by the pandemic. The primary trace of hassle got here in January when the computer systems and headsets didn’t arrive from China.
Social distancing is strictly noticed within the trailers and the seats, headsets and headphones rigorously disinfected after every use.
“We would like individuals to be comfy and we hope that when the general public come and see Symphony, they will neglect – for 40 minutes a minimum of – concerning the virus that’s not letting us dwell,” mentioned Elisa Durán, the deputy basic director of La Caixa Basis.
Igor Cortadellas, who directed the 2 movies, likens the venture to “a visible poem that was made by greater than 250 individuals”. However regardless of the abilities of all concerned, Cortadellas admits to being concerned about how precisely the poem can be written. Inspiration ultimately got here from the celebrities – or, extra prosaically, from some Seventies articles about Nasa.
“Once they despatched the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes into house to attempt to join humankind with any alien civilisations, they included a compendium of Earth noises: thunder, the sound of the ocean and birdsong,” he mentioned.
“There was additionally music, together with the primary motion of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony. These two quite simple issues – the music of nature and the music of Beethoven – have been my beginning factors.”
Dudamel additionally hopes that Symphony will reach making first contact with younger individuals who see classical music as a forbidding, alien and rarefied entity.
“Individuals typically take into consideration classical music as very severe rigorous,” he mentioned. “However we wish individuals to benefit from the expertise and for it to be a primary step – a primary connection – so {that a} new era can dwell music and perceive music and really feel it belongs to them.”
• Symphony: A Journey to the Coronary heart of Classical Music, from 22 December to 19 January, Madrid, Spain