The Armenian State Symphony Orchestra has produced video recordings of widely known classical music pieces in cooperation with “HomeOrchestra” – a Swiss educational project.
In her introduction of this innovative program of promoting classical music, HomeOrchestra’s founder Lola Smolokowski Rasulova indicated at the program’s aim to motivate and inspire children and adolescents to learn and practice music.
“We know it all too well how driven kids are by the high-tech world in our days. What we consider novelty are, in fact, daily experiences for them. With this in mind, we created a project that enables children starting from the age of 4-5 to download through the mobile application of the HomeOrchestra their favorite pieces of classical music in simplified arrangements and adaptations. We offer over 100 performances of most popular classical music pieces, each presented with orchestral accompaniments. This means that children or beginner soloists will be able to play with the orchestra from home. Unlike other seemingly identical programs, our project makes available real orchestral accompaniments instead of simulations created with computers”, the founder of HomeOrchestra explained.
This Swiss educational program has a history spanning 7 years and enjoys wide recognition across the world. While in the scope of this program musicians could only be listening to performances of orchestras in the past, today, owing to the joint efforts with the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, it is possible for soloists to follow in their home screens the orchestra, the conductor and the concert hall simultaneously and get a perception of a live concert. Young users may also take videos of their performances and submit them to the HomeOrchestra, where their pieces will be integrated into the existing videos of the orchestral accompaniment, creating a virtual reality with high-tech solutions.
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“I believe that a practical experience with the orchestra is possible and should be developed at an early age. Even children with elementary knowledge in music can find something that matches their interest. And we are also very happy to have the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra as a part of this project”, Lola Smolokowski Rasulova underscores.
The performances of the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra for the video recordings were led by the Spanish conductor Riccardo Cassero. Maestro noticeds the meaningful mission of the HomeOrchestra project in saying: “This is a fantastic concept. It’s a great opportunity for the users to develop their performing skills and show their talents.”
HomeOrchestra is a novelty in teaching classical music. The Maestro himself stated that the current times force educators of this area as well to go for innovative approaches. “We must be able to introduce new concepts in the domain of classical music. We also need to attract new audiences and modern technologies are immensely expedient in this respect. Projects like this promise exciting advancements in the future”, the conductor shares his views.
Riccardo Cassero also mentioned that he was on his first visit to Armenia and has very good feelings working with musicians in a country with such rich cultural heritage as ours.
Incidentally, in the framework of the cooperation with the HomeOrchestra project Aram Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance” from the ballet “Gayane” was video recorded as well and will be incorporated in the repertoire of the project.
Arpine Gabrielyan
