Mechanical Orchestra

This programme is held in Hungarian.

It’s not every day you hear pieces by Josquin, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Liszt, and Beethoven alongside songs by Queen, the Beatles, Illés, and Britney Spears in a single repertoire, all performed by a fully robotic orchestra. The Robot Organ and its “orchestra” now accomplish all this at once. It leads listeners on a journey through the history of music, after Dániel Váczi arranged the most significant musical compositions of several centuries for instruments that are controlled by computer yet sound completely acoustic.

The jewel of the venue called the Creative Sound Space at the House of Hungarian Music, opened in 2022, is an experimental organ about which it is no exaggeration to say that it is a true Hungaricum. Dániel Váczi developed the concept of the installation largely based on ideas that György Ligeti had already envisioned in the 1960s for the organ of the future. Full computer (MIDI) control is in itself capable of eliciting unusual sounds, but here, in a unique way, remote control also extends to parameters such as the wind pressure of the pipes or their tuning. At the same time, the Robot Organ is supported by an entire orchestra, every element of which is also controlled by computer. Among its members you can hear drums, marimba, accordion, upright piano, and glockenspiel.