By BRIAN RUDMAN
Rock bands do it. So do sports teams. Now it's the turn of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra to use the Big Screen.
Beginning next month, Auckland Town Hall audiences will be able to sit back and see double - the NZSO on stage and, above it on a 4m by 3m screen, a simultaneous video version shot from five cameras.
Worried purists can relax, though. There are no plans for instant replays or a video referee. Chief executive Ian Fraser says there will be no need. "The NZSO does not make mistakes."
In what is said to be a world first, the concert will be filmed by up to five small remotely controlled cameras set up and controlled by technical staff from The Edge.
Working from a musical score, the director will be able to zoom and pan the cameras, highlighting, perhaps, the fingers of the pianist.
Mr Fraser says fewer people are coming to traditional symphony concerts. Brought up in the television age, they want a better visual experience.
"If we don't deal with these problems then we deserve everything we get. You can't sit on your bum and say it's the way things have been done. String players used to use gut strings once. It's just a case of keeping up."
The Auckland Town Hall "is unquestionably the best acoustic in New Zealand" for symphonic music but many patrons complain about the poor sight lines, both from the flat-floored stalls and from the side-on seating upstairs.
Mr Fraser says the Big Screen will ensure everyone gets a good view of the action.
The screen makes its Town Hall debut on April 15, when the NZSO presents Mahler's 9th Symphony and premieres Christopher Marshall's Hikurangi Sunrise.
The Auckland Philharmonia, which has just had two sellout Town Hall concerts starring cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, has no plans to follow suit.
"We haven't had any complaints this time," said general manager Lloyd Williams.
"Those who grumble about sight lines can go to our concerts in the Aotea Centre. I guess if we weren't getting full houses in the Town Hall we would have to think up ways of getting more bums on seats."
NZSO scores with world-first double vision
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