An orchestral odyssey

In the footsteps of Prokofiev and Britten, with assistance from a sprite and an A-list team, American composer Mason Bates has created a new audiovisual guide to the orchestra; he explains all to Tom Stewart

- Tom Stewart

As the camera pans from orchestra to audience in the final scene of Tár, we learn just how far the mighty conductor has fallen. We first met her many indiscretions earlier, as she was preparing to record a complete cycle of Mahler symphonies with the Berlin Phil. Now she finds herself directing a provincial performance of music from a video game, with a giant projection screen behind the orchestra, players wearing click-track headsets and an audience done up in elaborate fantasy cosplay.

In reality, live orchestral performance has found necessary new eyes and ears in recent years thanks to events just like the one we're invited to scoff at in Tár. But does this offer anything to artists beyond boosted revenues? US composer Mason Bates certainly thinks so. His audiovisual guide to the orchestra, Philharmonia Fantastique, uses the same set up and, later this month, will receive its European premiere by the Aurora Orchestra at London's Southbank Centre.

'Orchestras have really locked down a new medium with the projections and the click tracks, Bates tells me from his studio outside San Francisco. I thought it would be really fun to write for it specifically, rather than just seeing them do Home Alone or something every year.'

Philharmonia Fantastique was first performed last spring and recorded by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of the six American ensembles that first commissioned it (the others being Dallas Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony and the American Youth Symphony). The 25-minute work comprises a 'concerto for orchestra' with live electronics and a charming animation, projected behind the players, of a two-dimensional 'sprite' who goes on a magical mystery tour of the instruments on stage.