4 elements
The first concert of the “Visual Reality of Music” cycle, bearing the same name, took place on October 3, 2008, in the Grand Hall of the Odesa Regional Philharmonic. Since then, numerous concerts have been performed, including “Music by the Sea”, “Classics Open-Air”, “Music of Love”, and “The Four Elements”.
The project “Visual Reality of Music” itself represents a new stage genre — a multimedia piano concert.
Alexey Botvinov performs works by Bach, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Freidlin, Karamanov, and many other composers, accompanied by VJ Videomatics — a video artist (VJ) who, in real time and before the eyes of the audience, selects and creates visual effects synchronized with the music using specialized equipment. Modern video projection systems are installed on stage. The VJ mixes visual imagery and video fragments live on large screens — hands, the pianist’s face, scenes from the stage — improvising and altering projections to create a living video backdrop that complements the musical theme.
The “Visual Reality of Music” project is far from a cold demonstration of technical prowess by the pianist and VJs. On the contrary, it offers listeners (and viewers!) a deeper immersion into the essence of music, providing a new emotional and intellectual experience.
The idea of visualizing music is not new. As early as the 18th century, scientists sought correlations between sound and color through mechanistic analogies. Yet the true realization of this auditory-visual polyphony emerged only in the 20th century, when musicians and artists such as Alexander Scriabin, Arnold Schoenberg, Grigory Gidoni, Thomas Wilfred, and others explored it. The fusion of color, light, and spatial graphic projections with music began to be seen not as duplication, but as complementarity — a unity of imagery. The first composer in history to use color and light music was Alexander Scriabin. His aesthetic revelation — the symphonic “Poem of Fire” (“Prometheus”) — was intended to be accompanied by light effects via a color organ. The hall would be bathed in the glow of various colors. Scriabin even developed a “color-hearing” chart, matching specific tonalities to colors. All of this aimed to expand the associative and visual spectrum of musical perception.
Nowadays, everything Scriabin once dreamed of can be realized. Light music, spatial stereo effects, and holographic imagery can transform a concert into a breathtaking mystery.
