Year

2016

Artists

FRIEDRICH KLEINHAPL (CELLO) & ANDREAS WOYKE (PIANO)

Context

ARTISTIC PROGRAMM DURING EUROPEAN FORUM ALPBACH FOR THE OPENING OF THE ELISABETH HERZ-KREMENAK-HALL

Location

ALPBACH, AUSTRIA

With Music Around the World

Why travel when you can have every concert hall in the world under a single roof? This was the premise of a 2016 art collaboration by cellist Friedrich Kleinhapl and pianist Andreas Woyke, as they sought to take advantage of the cutting-edge technology behind the “active acoustics” of the Elisabeth Herz-Kremenak Hall.

The concert hall, in the futuristic Congress Centre in the Austrian village of Alpbach, features technology that allows its acoustics to be dynamically changed to meet the needs of the music. Or, in the case of Kleinhapl and Woyke’s experimental performance, to mimic concert halls from cities around the world.

The art music project, which was part of the cultural program of Technology Talks at the European Forum Alpbach 2016, was supported by the AVL Cultural Foundation and took the audience on a journey around the globe in 80 minutes. From the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris, to the Viennese Konzerthaus, New York’s Carnegie Hall and London’s St Martin-in-the-Fields, the venue mimicked the acoustic profile of some of the world’s most famous concert halls. And the audience was magically transported around the world.