Berlin, Aug. 30, 2022. The lights dim, the conductor raises his baton - the show begins. The orchestra plays famous works as well and with full symphonic orchestral sound in hi-fi stereo quality as you would expect from symphony and opera orchestras.

This is "9 classics" from "The Peter Debik Movie Orchestra":

1. Georges Bizet: Carmen - Overture
2. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492 - Overture
3. Gioachino Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia - Overture
4. Charles François Gounod: Faust - Overture
5. Ludwig van Beethoven: Coriolan Overture, op. 62
6. Engelbert Humperdinck: Hänsel & Gretel – Overture to Act I
7. Engelbert Humperdinck: Hänsel & Gretel – Dream Pantomime
8. Richard Wagner: Tannhauser, WWV 70 - Overture
9. Richard Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg, WWV 96 - Overture
The gross running time is approximately 66 minutes.

The Special Thing About It

The twist is that everything you hear on the album was arranged, performed, mixed, mastered and led to the finished CD by just one person, which rivals the rest of the classical music world in terms of quality.
The inventor of this "one-person orchestra" is Peter Debik, TV and film composer under several pseudonyms. He says, "A great show doesn't start on stage, it starts before the ticket sales." And he delivers that show. Even the name "orchestra" is entertainment that defies convention, since it is usually understood to mean a group of musicians. Inspired by the "trio" of a British musician and comedian, which ironically is actually only a duo, he invented "The Peter Debik Movie Orchestra", which is actually only himself.

He makes the listeners of his album "9 classics" forget that they are actually listening to only one person. Everything sounds so good that the CD has a disruptive character. After all, why do we need real orchestras in the future if one person can do it all by himself?

In truth, of course, it's not quite that simple. To reproduce the whole orchestra, even a single person needs a lot of time. For example, Debik's "Tannhauser" overture occupies more than 100 stereo channel strips in the mixing console. With a playing time of about 15 minutes, one can imagine how much organizational effort that is. In total, almost 1000 working hours went into the musical part of the album.

On Par With Big Productions

Despite high technical effort, the album is not static or "overproduced," but human. In Debik's "Coriolan," the strings could be cut back at one point in favor of the flute, but that's a matter of taste. The piece nevertheless joins the ranks of great well-known orchestral productions. If one absolutely wanted to, one could also bring out a few solo violin parts in Gounod's Faust better, perhaps with more vibrato, but one can leave it alone, because it is also good, coherent and pleasing as it is now. Despite the colorful assortment of titles, everything seems to be of one piece and has a consistently high musical quality. The sound is not as washed out and bleached out as some conventional orchestral productions. Instead, all the works are acoustically brilliant, resounding the full range from monumental bass to crystalline treble. Neither muddy, muffled mids nor background noise detract from the transparency. It's a joy to listen to. “9 classics” by "The Peter Debik Movie Orchestra" is on par with great productions.

Everything sounds real to the touch and is adapted to the era of what is heard in each case. Whether everything is acoustic instruments, digital has been added or even everything comes from the computer? The communication philosopher Villém Flusser wrote: "... where the ‘becoming more probable’ reaches the highest degree, where it is about to overturn into the real, one speaks of virtual." How much virtuality is in "9 classics", if any, remains unclear. Only one thing is certain: that nothing here has been sampled from other productions, but that the music has been newly recorded. This is proven by small compositional "upgrades" that Debik has smuggled into "9 classics" with a sure instinct.

Attack on the Establishment

Debik knows that he wouldn't be able to take on stars in the stressful continuous operation of big stages, but he's still a bit of a thorn in the flesh of others. For he is not a trained musician, but a banker, then a master of Communication Sciences and Linguistics with top grades in both majors, and finally an IT expert. His album "9 classics" raises the question of how someone who really shouldn't be able to do it manages to deliver a more pleasing quality than some artists who have specialized in the genre for decades. At the same time, Peter Debik's attitude to music is not classical at all, but rather outrageous from the point of view of the establishment: Sheet music is only the producer's non-binding serving suggestion of how he thinks his work should be played. Debik qualifies, however, that this only applies as long as the show is right and the audience feels well entertained. And indeed: if you listen closely to his overture to the Barber of Seville, for example, you will find two prominent notes that have been reinterpreted a tiny bit. But this does the work more good than harm, and those who don't know the notes very well won't notice the small upgrade. Listeners have so far described his Barber as "fantastic." How could entertainment be any better?

Release And Availability

The album "9 classics" will be available for download in streaming services (Spotify, Amazon Music and others) from September 8, 2022 and a little later on audio CD with booklet. Those who want to hear it in advance will find a Spotify playlist with all the individual tracks of the album and in Youtube a complete version with track subdivision and without commercial interruption. Music lovers should consider the real CD, because the one-person style alone makes the album "9 classics" such a successful attack on the classical music establishment that it belongs in every collection.


About Peter Debik

Peter Rolf Michael Debik was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1970 as the son of opera singers Edith and Hans-Joachim Debik. After moving to Berlin (West) in 1978, he attended the British-German Charles Dickens Elementary School, then the Erich Hoepner High School (today the Heinz Berggruen High School), which was characterized by music, art and film. A year in the USA in 1987/88 he graduated with a US high school diploma. In 1990 he passed the German Abitur, in 1992 he completed his professional training as a bank clerk and in 2002 he received a master's degree from the Technical University of Berlin with top grades in Communication Science and Linguistics with a focus on communication technology and signal processing. Gifted and a member of the German chapter of Mensa, he is now the owner of the web hosting provider and software developer Bitpalast.

Although Debik grew up with music "backstage" and attended a music high school he rejected a conventional musical education because of the associated narrow thinking and the focus on reproduction instead of invention. Two years of piano lessons were a declaration of war on a musical freedom fighter and synesthete, who found sight reading to be boring "painting by numbers".

Instead, Debik can not only hear individual voices from works and immediately replay them, but because of his synesthesia he can also transform mental cinema into new compositions and decorate them with complex harmonies.

Since the turn of the millennium, Debik has developed his second job from hobby compositions and today produces songs, instrumentals and cues for TV and film under pseudonyms..

 
Press Contact

Peter Debik M.A.
The Peter Debik Movie Orchestra
c/o Bitpalast GmbH
Postfach 19 15 64
14005 Berlin
Germany
Phone +49 30 32 70 18 92
Telefax +49 30 32 70 18 91
www.one-person-orchestra.com
[email protected]

Album Preview

Youtube https://youtu.be/0cTaA2nJduU
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4pJmuvO2rTeeFgxsAbj7kb

High Resolution Images

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Peter Debik Portrait 1
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Peter Debik Portrait 2
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Audio-CD Album Cover
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Audio-CD Album Back
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Audio-CD Album Open
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Audio-CD w/o Case
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Jewel Case & CD Collage
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