Just as the Philharmonia Orchestra is using VR to enable people find out what it is like to join a live orchestra [see my article]. Another project is doing something similar but with a real live orchestra. With its event Inside the Orchestra, the Pavel Kushnir Scholarship is offering audience members the chance to find out what an orchestra sounds like when you are sitting inside it.
On Wednesday 16 September 2026 at Annunciation Church, Marble Arch, W1H 7AH, conductor Bogdan Skrypka lead the Willow Orchestra in a live rehearsal of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. For the first part of the evening, audience members will be invited to sit inside the Willow Orchestra, among the musicians. Rather than hearing the orchestra from the conventional distance of a concert hall seat, the audience will experience the rehearsal from within the ensemble to observe at close range how an orchestral performance is created.
The rehearsal is deliberately presented as a working process rather than a polished performance. Then after the interval the audience will return to traditional seating and hear the complete Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, experiencing the finished performance from the outside after having witnessed its creation from within.
The project aims to bring audiences closer to the process of orchestral music-making and to offer an experience that goes beyond the traditional relationship between performer and listener.
The Pavel Kushnir Scholarship was established in London in memory of a brilliant pianist and educator. Arrested for speaking out loud against the Russian invasion of Ukraine on his YouTube channel with only five subscribers, Pavel Kushnir died in a Russian detention centre [see my article]. The scholarship is aiming to help students from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus to begin or continue their music studies across the UK, Europe or the US.
Full details of Inside the Orchestra from EventBrite.
