Digital Concert Hall

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The English term Digital Concert Hall ( DCH to German: Digital Concert Hall ) is a digital medium for the transmission of current or historical concerts of the Berlin Philharmonic in the Internet , from which they can then be retrieved.

history

The Digital Concert Hall was set up at the end of 2008. With this project, the Berliner Philharmoniker have done pioneering work to make classical orchestral music available worldwide beyond the venue and the time of the concerts.

The Digital Concert Hall also serves to document the interpretations of the orchestra and its conductors.

The Digital Concert Hall was awarded the LeadAward 2009 in the WebTV category in gold and the OnlineStar '09 jury award in bronze.

Since July 2014, the Digital Concert Hall has also been offering edited concerts by Herbert von Karajans .

In the course of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic , the Digital Concert Hall is offering free access for 30 days.

Content

Most of the 40 or so concert programs of the Berliner Philharmoniker annually from the Philharmonie Berlin can be followed via live streaming in high image resolution ( high definition video ) and with the best sound quality on the Internet thanks to the establishment of the Digital Concert Hall , from the perspective of the orchestra stage.

In addition, these concerts will be followed up and can be accessed in the concert archive of the Digital Concert Hall with a few days' delay. In addition to the current concerts, mainly under Sir Simon Rattle , the extensive concert archive also includes performances from the past, some from the 1990s under Claudio Abbado . Some concerts in the Berlin Waldbühne in Grunewald or recordings from the series of European concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic are also archived.

There are also documentaries, for example the films Rhythm Is It! on the development of dance scenes for the ballet Le sacre du printemps by Igor Stravinsky with a large group of young people or Trip to Asia , as well as contributions from the training program of the Berlin Philharmonic and interviews.

The interviews and the contributions from the training program are usually available free of charge, while the concerts and documentaries are chargeable, apart from rare exceptions. For payment there are time-limited tickets for seven or thirty days or a year, whereby the user can access any number of concerts during the selected period. There is also a monthly subscription with an extension option. Tickets are also available as gift vouchers.

Since July 2014, the archive of the Digital Concert Hall of the Berliner Philharmoniker has contained live streams of current concerts as well as post-processed archive recordings of some of Herbert von Karajan's concerts from the 1960s and 1970s. This also documents how much the style of music has changed over the past decades.

technology

To record the moving images during the concerts, seven high-resolution video cameras were installed in the Berlin Philharmonic above the orchestra stage, which - like the microphones for the sound recordings - can be remotely controlled.

The content can be called up and played back via an Internet connection, either in a web browser or with appropriately equipped televisions or Blu-ray Disc players . The content can also be accessed on smartphones and tablets using the iOS or Android app.

The stereo sound is sampled at 48 kilohertz with 24 bits and transmitted in AAC coding with a data rate of 256 kilobits per second. Different qualities are available for image reproduction depending on the transmission bandwidth, whereby the videos are coded according to the H.264 standard: The quality setting or changeover is usually automatic depending on the current transmission rate .:

Quality level Video bit rate Video resolution Audio bit rate
maximum 3280 kbit / s 1920 × 1080 320 kbit / s Maximum only available at archive concerts
Very high 2244 kbit / s 1280 × 720 256 kbit / s
High 1844 kbit / s 1280 × 720 256 kbit / s
medium 1244 kbit / s 960 x 540 256 kbit / s
Low 844 kbit / s 960 x 540 256 kbit / s
Very low 444 kbit / s 640 × 360 256 kbit / s

At the 2016 Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin , Panasonic announced that it would equip the Digital Concert Hall with the technical requirements for 4K image resolution for the production, editing and coding of video recordings . The agreement came into force on January 1, 2017. The Internet Initiative Japan is responsible for distributing the content via streaming on the Internet .

References and footnotes

  1. ↑ Wolfram Goertz: Digital Concert Hall - Die Digitale Philharmonie , www.rp-online.de from December 15, 2008 (accessed on February 27, 2012)
  2. ↑ The Digital Concert Hall is now free for everyone. Berliner Philharmoniker, accessed on April 2, 2020 .
  3. ↑ In the vernacular of Berliners, the building is called "Circus Karajani", after the former chief conductor Herbert von Karajan , because the orchestra stage is surrounded on all sides by spectators like a circus ring.
  4. ↑ Subscriptions, tickets and vouchers; or concert archive (alphabetical overview; accessed on November 20, 2013)
  5. ↑ Compare Karajan's Pastorale from 1971 with Abbado's interpretation from 2001 and that of Sir Simon Rattle from 2013.
  6. ↑ The Digital Concert Hall at a glance - Die Technik , www.zeit.de, accessed on February 27, 2012
  7. ↑ Digital Concert Hall Questions & Answers , accessed March 12, 2017
  8. ↑ It should be taken into account that the transmission quality to the recipient can change very quickly over time, for example if the Internet connection is heavily dependent on the load.
  9. ↑ Collaboration with Panasonic , August 31, 2016, accessed September 20, 2016
  10. ^ Berliner Philharmoniker: Berlin Phil Media and Panasonic agree on cooperation . ( berliner-philharmoniker.de [accessed January 27, 2017]).
  11. ↑ Berliner Philharmoniker Streaming Partner , Internet Initiative Japan, accessed on March 6, 2020

Web links