The Berlin Philharmonic has launched the world's first digital concert hall, which will broadcast its performances live on the internet and has the potential to widen the audience from a few hundred to millions around the world. Sir Simon Rattle, the Berlin Philharmonic's artistic director and chief conductor, said the orchestra's decision to broadcast most of its concerts as live video streams for a fee from next month was the "way of the future" for classical music. "It's a marvellous thing for both the orchestra and the public and it's a wonderful thing to be able to welcome far more people to the Philharmonie [concert hall] than before," he said.
Under the slogan Any Place, Any Time, music lovers are being invited to take a front-row seat at the mustard-yellow concert hall from January at a cost of €9.99 for 48 hours' access, or €149 for a season of about 30 concerts. They will also be given access to an archive of previous performances. The project will start on January 6th with a performance of Brahms's 1st Symphony and other works. Music critics said it would help to secure classical music's place in the multimedia world.
Olaf Maninger, the orchestra's principal cellist and the driving force behind the project, said that remote-controlled cameras and state of the art technology in the concert hall would ensure high quality transmissions. "Our primary concern is to ... record our concerts as authentically and vividly as possible," he said. Details at the Berlin Philharmonic site.
