Videos
Remote Orchestra plays Rachmaninov’s Paganini Variation 18
Andante Cantabile
Soloist - Edward Cohen
Conductor - Olivia Clarke
Sound - Lukas Kowalski
Video - Fritz Polzer
You can support our musicians and the COVID-19 Response Fund here
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Our PROCESS
We created this video by recording in phases and layering the parts.
Phase 1: Piano soloist
Phase 2: Conductor
Phase 3: 1st Violin (concert master)
Phase 4: 1st Flute
Phase 5: 1st Double Bass
Phase 6: 1st Cello
Phase 7: Everyone else
Olivia rehearsed individually with each main phase instrument before their recording.
This process took 3 weeks to complete.
After all the videos were in, our sound engineer, Lukas Kowalski, put all of the files together and created our piece.
We wanted to avoid using a click track and to enable the musicians to play in the most natural way possible.
What we found
On the whole we found this process worked extremely well.
Our piece has lots of fluctuation of rhythms (rubato), so our biggest challenge was getting the instruments to play together at these points in the music.
In a live rehearsal that would have been quickly solved as orchestras automatically sync themselves. In this case, we used a combination of internet rehearsal with Olivia and the sound engineering expertise of Lukas.
The musicians were able to play by watching the conductor and watching and listening to whichever instrument had the closest part to theirs.
The most common complaint from musicians was managing the headphones and playing at the same time. They found it challenging to play properly without being able to hear themselves completely.
Overall the process was much more time-consuming than a live rehearsal and concert situation, but it was great fun to try and do our jobs in a different way. We are truly grateful that we found a way to make music together at this difficult time.
18th April 2020