The Grade One listed St George’s Hall in Liverpool has been transformed into an immersive, multi-sensory light show using as its beat Smetana’s Moldau
For half an hour the audience lying on bean bags on the floor can gaze up and see the ceilings and walls transformed into an almost psychedelic experience created in collaboration with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra
The piece was written to sound the movement of the Vltava River, also known as the Moldau.
First, it depicts the river’s movement from the mountains in the Bohemian Forest. Then it follows the river as it flows through rural Czechoslovakia. Finally, it traces the river’s movement as it reaches the capital Prague.
Composer Smetana celebrates the river’s powerful journey in his composition weaving myth and legend into his moving melodies.
Now those myths and legends take over the 19th Century neoclassical architecture of Liverpool, a stones throw from Lime Street station, its gold leaf and porticoes shimmering with the electronic beat of the flowing river
The entire ceiling and architecture have been precisely measured and mapped to ensure perfectly aligned projections by the Swiss art collective PROJEKTIL
As Goethe wrote in 1779
The soul of man is like the water:It comes from heaven,It returns to heaven,
And down again to earth must go,Ever changing.
Soul of man, How like to the water!
Flow is on at Liverpool’s St George’s Hall and runs until September
