Project:              BMW Classics

Artiste:              London Symphony Orchestra

Venue:               Trafalgar Square

Date:                 June 2024

Audience size:  8000

Richard has worked with the LSO for many years and this year was the latest in the long line of BMW classic series on Trafalgar Square. RNSS Ltd provided a fully flown Meyer system with control from Midas and Yamaha.

Tempting though it is to simply repeat what had successfully been done in previous years, this year a fresh look was taken.  Beyond the obvious challenge of making the orchestra sound like the LSO to every member of the audience against a backdrop of cars, buses and helicopters we had to consider how we communicate to the world beyond the square itself.

Onstage we deployed an electronically assisted acoustic to assist the musicians in feeling supported.  Outdoor stages can be very lonely places to perform as it is often hard to hear the orchestra as a whole.  We introduced an updated version of our stage acoustic system and though we had very little rehearsal time to set it up with the musicians it appears to have been well received again this year.

This year was the first year that we retired our fleet of Midas H3000 analogue consoles from this show. Traditionally we used an H3000 to handle the strings, sending stems into the main Yamaha consoles in the house, onstage and of course to the recording and broadcast trucks. We did this – with the greatest respect to Yamaha- simply to ensure the Midas preamps and electronics were first inline with their exquisite sound. In 2023 we used a Yamaha PM10 Rivage for the first time as the master console and in 2024 we took the step of using the new RPIO stage racks rather than the analogue H3000. This may sound like a very small detail but to us such things are crucial.