Vasily Petrenko & Liverpool Phil: Virtual Concert

Vasily Petrenko, the youngest conductor ever to be appointed to the Liverpool Philharmics, will head the orchestra in the first ever virtual Classical concert. On Friday, September 14th at 7.30 pm, the cyber world of “Second Life” will form the stage for a program of Ravel, Rachmaninov and two local composers, Kenneth Hesketh and John McCabe. Anyone interested in listening will need to become a part of the “Second Life” community and take a trip to the 3-D virtual version of the Orchestra’s home venue, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. During the event, they will be able to communicate with each other, get (virtual!?) snacks and refreshments and – as the organisors explicitely point out – “nip to the loo”. After Vasily Petrenko has allowed the last note to die down, the audience will be able to meet him, solo star Kate Royal or Kenneth Hesketh in the adjacent bar for a chat. The Liverpool Philharmonics have furthermore arranged a raffle, which will see winners jet off to a 3d representation of an island together with Royal, Petrenko and Hesketh. A Youtube video shows how the virtual environment was built using the original as a template and even though the digital avatars of Vasily Petrenko or Kate Royal are still under disclosure, these first pictures are quite promising. For Vasily Petrenko, this project, which has a potential crowd of eight million, is a further step in cementing his position in Liverpool, which has gone from strength to strength and an obvious step for a conductor who pays more than just lipservice to bringing Classical music back into the here and now: “I’ve got a very broad repertoire, I define classical music as more than 50 years old so you could say that the Beatles is nearly classical music!”