SOLD-OUT - ROBOT ORGAN

It’s not every day that we get to hear the music of Josquin, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Liszt and Beethoven alongside songs by Queen, the Beatles, Illés and Britney Spears as performed by a fully robotic orchestra. But today, the Robot Organ and its ‘orchestra’ will do just that, all at the same time. It will guide the listeners on a journey through the history of music based on an arrangement by Dániel Váczi of the most significant musical compositions from the past few centuries: played on computer-controlled, but fully acoustic, instruments. The jewel of the House of Music Hungary’s Creative Sound Space, which opened in 2022, is the experimental organ, and it is by no means an exaggeration to call this device a genuine Hungaricum. The concept behind the installation was largely developed by Dániel Váczi based on the ideas that György Ligeti had for the organ of the future back in the 1960s. While the fully computerised MIDI control unit is already capable of producing unusual sounds by itself, the remote control here also extends uniquely to parameters such as the wind pressure and tuning of the pipes. At the same time, the Robot Organ is also supported by an entire orchestra, each element of which is controlled by a computer as well. The instruments include a marimba, accordion, pianino and glockenspiel.