Page 40 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

A socially distanced rehearsal with Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra ahead of
the Proms CREDIT: PA

“[But] digital performances could never replace live performance…music making is all about
performing with other people, and recording your part in isolation is actually very difficult and not
much fun. [Furthermore], human interaction and ‘unedited’ sound and performance is so much of
what makes going to a concert special.”

Ellie’s sentiment is echoed - with redoubled and deeply significant concerns – by Baluji Shrivastav
OBE, Musical Director of Inner Vision Orchestra: the UK’s only blind professional orchestra. “We are
blind musicians who depend on listening to each other even more than sighted musicians, who
read music while they are playing,” he explains. “Unless we are physically together we cannot
function fully.”

Baluji speaks with deep emotion about what performing in front of a live audience means for Inner
Vision. “When we perform in front of a live audience, our blindness is irrelevant to us. The
interaction with the audience makes us complete, and adds a dimension to the music and the
experience because music is about communication and we need to feel that. That is our life blood.”

If one thing’s for sure, then, it’s that there’s hope. Stephen Maddock is planning on starting
orchestral concerts with the CBSO later in the autumn: “Even if we have to have a smaller
orchestra (we think we can fit 50-60 musicians on stage at [a] two metre distance, down from our
normal 90-100) and much smaller audiences (at two metre distancing, seating capacity is around
25 per cent of the usual size) we are determined to start producing art again,” he says. Second
lockdown permitting, here’s hoping other orchestras are able to look at following suit.

And there’s hope for the present, too. “Nothing will beat the wonder of hearing a symphony
orchestra together in a space, but while we can't do that, we'll work tirelessly with our
technological systems to create alternative ways of sharing musical expression,” says Julian
Hepple. “I think Victor Hugo hit the nail right on the head when he said: ‘Music expresses that