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DPA Mics Triple Orchestra For Stockhausen's Gruppen At Musikfest Berlin 2008
More than 50 DPA 4060 and 4061 miniature mics have been used for a production of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gruppen - a piece for three orchestras - performed during the Berliner Festival in late September. The epic piece was performed four times as part of the festival finale by the Berliner Philharmonika with conductors Sir Simon Rattle, Daniel Harding and Michael Boder, in a 1930s aircraft hangar at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin.
Gruppen was written for 109 players divided into three orchestral units, each with its own conductor, deployed in a horseshoe shape to the left, front and right of the audience. The spatial separation was designed to keep simultaneously played, musically separate passages distinct from one another, but in some passages a single musical process passes from one orchestra to another. This setup required three discrete sound systems.
The 4060s and 4061s were used for all string instruments: violins, violas, cellos and double basses. They were attached to the instruments with DPA MHS6001 microphone holders for strings.
The mics were supplied by Dutch rental company Da Capo, which specialises in orchestra miking and own a large DPA inventory. The sound engineer working on the project was Paul Jeukendrup who explains the techniques he used: "I chose to close mic the instruments because I wanted to avoid comb filtering and crosstalk, which both happen when using many overhead mics," he says. "The music is very detailed and I wanted to bring this out in the auditorium. Rather than dealing with a large string section as in symphonic music, the 109 individual musicians were divided between three different stages, so I had to consider each musician as a potential soloist and thus be able to control the level of each individual instrument."
Another important consideration was the physical mounting of the mics onto the instruments. "Orchestra musicians often own extremely valuable instruments, which they must be prepared to mount a microphone onto," he says. "This turned out to be no problem at all with DPA's mic holder for strings, which rests gently on the instrument. And visually, the DPA 4060 and 4061 had the advantage of needing no microphone stands on stage.
"I was extremely pleased with the results, and so were the audience, the orchestras and the promoter. We were able to bring out the details of the music in the hangar in such a natural way that many people did not realize the concerts were amplified, which was exactly our goal."
7th October 2008
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