The OBC may not register a sell-out every weekend in Barcelona, ??but L’Auditori has set out to be present all over the world through the audiovisual platform and its digital (and physical) label. Using pop publishing and distribution methods, he is positioning his orchestra well in the online symphony market. And it has its ally Naxos.
His idea of ??generating high-quality content to release on the web is materialized with projects such as the latest commission for the composer Bernat Vivancos, who has responded with a piece in scordatura, the technique that consists of tuning part of the instrument in tonalities different from usual. But he has also done it by thinking of recording it and listening to it in 3D, with Dolby Atmos, a system that has so far been used by the philharmonics in Paris and Berlin.
The Auditorium offered a listening session yesterday in the Esmuc rehearsal room, with a dozen loudspeakers arranged in a circle to reproduce, as far as possible, the harmonic shock that Vivancos a U is looking for. The title responds both to the idea of ??you (tu in English), that is, the experience of each one, and to the u of utopia, because it reflects those dreams that will not come true. “It is the story of a great failure”, says the author.
Those invited to hear it at l’Esmuc fight over the seat that is located right in the center of the circular structure that holds the speakers, since that is where the dissonant sounds collide. Vivancos knows that this is a difficult work to program live. The orchestra could just play U and go home. Because? Because he wanted to go beyond the scordatura of an instrument he had already used in The City of Angels for twenty strings and divide the orchestra into three: the tempered central part, tuned to 4:42; another to an octave higher, and the third, to an eighth lower.
“Thus we destroy the harmonic world a little and obtain a clash of sounds which, in a quality listening session, allows you to feel each harmony and this clash, with interesting oscillations”, explains the musician. “From time to time the central orchestra emerges, but it is only a mirage within the experiential personal chaos: you discover beauty, you think you have found it, but you haven’t”. What matters to U , he warns, is the spiritual side, that of utopia and failure. “It’s not just about experimenting with tempered sounds. In my music, space and the worship of sound account for 50%, it is not a work to listen to on the radio”. The Auditorium goes ahead and implements the 3D that has become normalized since Apple Music and other brands have adapted the Dolby Atmos format. Certain smartphones and wireless devices can capture this technology. Santi Barguñó, artistic programmer of the room, as well as music producer and sonographer, calls to “forget about the orchestra as we know it: everything is at the service of the narrative of the work. It’s the interesting part of claiming orchestras as an instrument of the 21st century”, he concludes.
