San Francisco Classical Voice

Both the program and the audience were divided into two parts. The half of the audience of which I was a member experienced the first part of the concert live in UT's Bates Concert hall with the real Miró Quartet present. The other half of the audience spent the first part of the concert in a separate hall where the performance was streamed live to a multi-speaker and video-screen array via a broadband Internet2 connection. At the intermission the audiences switched places in order to experience the remainder of the concert in the opposite environment. At the end of each half we were to fill out a questionnaire evaluating the experience, culminating with the tell-all query "Would you pay to see an event of this nature?"

In order to assist in the comparison, the quartet played the last piece from the first half of the concert (Hugo Wolf's Italian Serenade) again at the beginning of the second half. Thus, each audience group was able to compare the same piece in each environment. In the “live” hall, the quartet performed surrounded by microphones and cameras. Particularly noticeable was the placement of the ubiquitous “black box” dead-center of the quartet. It sat quietly in the place of honor, enigmatic but polite, with its unblinking blue diode facing the audience.

One question left off of the evaluation was whether or not all of the electronic equipment on stage detracted from the live portion of the performance. It did initially, but the group soon overcame these distractions, filling the hall with their charm, energy, and appealing interpretations. In the “virtual” hall the audience faced a stage on which the individual quartet members were projected onto four giant flat screens. The camera angle was head-on for each player, so that my perspective was that of sitting cross legged on the floor in the middle of the quartet. I had become the black box.

Also, the instruments were all close-miked and the audio picked up every nuance of the bow. This fact, combined with the uncomfortably high volume of the stage speakers (one behind each screen), resulted in an oddly voyeuristic experience. I had the sensation that I was actually inside the quartet, but that they didn't know I was there. Once I got used to this new environment I was able to appreciate the performance from a truly unique perspective.

There was, however, one important aspect of concert etiquette that was not addressed by the presenters. At the end of each piece, the “virtual” audience was confused about whether or not to applaud. Was a two-way connection established? Would the Miró Quartet know if we did or didn't clap? The audience was divided in its solution to the dilemma.

Did it work? In the end, I felt that I was being asked to compare apples and oranges. The “virtual” concert experience was a bells and whistles affair with its own kind of appeal — that we are all familiar with when we go to see the latest high-budget special effects film: engaging, but you know you're not really there. The “live” concert experience provided the warmth and energy that comes from being in the midst of talented professionals "flying without a net" and pulling it off.

There is a particular passage in the Wolf Serenade, humorous in its melodrama, where the cello soliloquizes in feigned angst. After establishing this mood, the viola and the 2nd violin briefly echo, mocking the sentiment. I can't tell you why, but the passage in the “live” version was more engaging and had more humor. Perhaps it was because the second time it wasn't as fresh for the quartet, or perhaps it was because I was staring at ten-foot flat screen images of the group while being pummelled by impeccable audio at nearly three times the volume of the original performance. Whatever the case, I left the concert feeling that the magic of a live performance has still managed to elude capture.