Digital Concert Hall

The Digital Concert Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is a user-friendly active web site which stores and offers (rsp. transmits on demand) the concerts of the Berlin philharmonic orchestra to users, for passive participation with the concert quasi-online on the orchestra's stage. This is of course liable to pay costs, but these are moderate, although the quality of the transmitted concerts is very high.

The transmission is per livestreaming on a high-definition video basis.

History

The Digital Concert Hall was founded at the end of 2008. ^[1] The Berlin Philharmonic has done pioneering work by establishing this institution. There was support by powerful economic companies (the "Deutsche Bank", the "Sony Ltd.", the "Deutsche Grammophon", and others).

The institution has been awarded with the LeadAward 2009 in the category 'WebTV', in gold, and with the DMMA OnlineStar 2009, in bronze.

Purpose

Almost all of the typically 40 concerts per year of the Berlin Philharmonic in their Hans Scharoun concert building (called "Zirkus Karajani" by the Berlin people, after the conductor Herbert von Karajan, because the musicians of the orchestra are here surrounded on all sides by the auditory, similar to the artists in a circus) are stored by this digital concert hall. Then, after some postprocessing, they are offered to (or transmitted to) the web audience. Also concerts at other places, e.g. in Japan or Taiwan, or at the "Waldbühne" (Berlin's free-air stage) are included,

There are additionally short documentations as, e.g., the film Rhythm Is It! (on the hard-working processes by a large group of pupils from Berlin's schools, realizing dancing features in the ballett Le sacre du printemps, with Strawinky's music directly performed by the Berlin Philharmonic), and also contributions from the educational program of the Berlin Philharmonic, or interviews with the conductor or soloists of a concert.

The additional documentations, and also the concert "trailers", are usually free of fee, whereas for the genuine concerts there are fees on a several-day basis, either for a 7-day, or for a 30-day, or for a 365-day period.^[2] There is also an "abonnement" ticket which is automatically prolonged from one month to the next, unless one cancels the arrangement.

The comprehensive all-included concert-archive (more than 800 pieces!) contains mainly the current concerts (most often led by the present chief conductor, Sir Simon Rattle, but also by guest conductors). However, it also contains less recent concerts, e.g., many concerts led by Claudio Abbado, who was chief conductor of the orchestra until 2004. ^[3]

Since July 2014, the archive of the Digital Concert Hall also contains, besides livestreams of more recent concerts of the orchestra, also a collection of archived concerts (reworked films of high acoustical and optical quality) of the 1960s and early 1970s, where the orchestra is led by Herbert von Karajan, then the chief conductor. In this way one can also directly compare different acoustical and optical interpretations; e.g., of Beethoven's "Pastorale" by Karajan (1971), by Claudio Abbado (2001) and by Sir Simon Rattle (2013).

Technology

To get the moving images, e.g. of the musicians and/or of the conductor, during the concerts, seven high-definition video cameras have been installed above the orchestra's stage of Hans Scharoun´s Berlin concert hall. These cameras, and also the microphones for the sound, can be moved by computerized programs.^[4]

The audio is transmitted at a rate of 256 Kilobit per second, the code corresponds to stereo Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) at 48 Kilohertz. For the image reconstruction the optimal choice for the user is automatically and instantaneously selected from five qualities offered. The coding corresponds to the H.264 standard (see below).^[5] In particular this means that the audio quality does not depend on the video quality, this is not the standard for other web pages such as youtube.com . The quality selection is performed automatically according to the available momentary rate of the internet connection.^[6] The automatically selected quality is one of five possibilities:

• Very high: 2.5 MBit/s
• High: 2.1 MBit/s
• Medium: 1.5 MBit/s
• Low: 1.1 MBit/s
• Very low: 0,7 MBit/s

The transmitted concerts can thus be viewed as quasi-live events from the orchestra's stage, simply with all usual web browsers with two loudspeakers, or by television receivers or Blu-ray players with the appropriate equipment.

External links

• Website of the Digital Concert Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic
  • The AudioVideoLifestream of a 2014 concert of the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle with Schumann's and Brahms's 1st sinfonies, exceptionally at no costs

References

1. Wolfram Goertz: Digital Concert Hall - Die digitale Philharmonie (in German), www.rp-online.de, 15 December 2008 (called on 27 February 2012)
2. The user is free, during these days, to listen to as many concerts as he or she likes.
3. tickets etc.; concert-archive (composers alphabetically ordered; called at 20 Nov. 2013)
4. Die Digital Concert Hall im Überblick - Die Technik, in German, www.zeit.de (called 27 February 2012)
5. Technical (and other) questions - e.g.: What audio & video formats are used to broadcast the concerts?, digitalconcerthall.com, called at 6;Jan. 2016
6. Here one should consider that the momentary quality of the internet connection may change rapidly, according to the present use by other persons or companies.