Orchestra in France plays sweet music amid lockdown

Even with its members scattered far and wide by coronavirus lockdown, an orchestra in France has still mand to make sweet music.

Like building a musical jigsaw puzzle, National Orchestra of France used magic of techlogy to weave toger sight and sounds of its musicians who recorded mselves playing "Bolero" alone at home into a seamless, rousing whole.

orchestra posted a video of performance on YouTube.

musicians miss performing toger and miss ir public.

This was ir way of staying in touch.

"For me and all musicians, I think, make music is to share music with or musicians. So this video, for our colleagues, can make something very rapeutic because we can stay in touch, everyone, and with Internet, with techlogy, we can make music toger," said Didier Benetti, kettle drum player.

Posted Sunday, video of orchestra members playing French composer Maurice Ravel's work quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of views.

It starts with just three musicians: a cellist, a violinist and a percussionist with "Stay home" written on his red drum.

A flutist joins, haunting, bewitching, seemingly playing in his lounge.

musical tension and power builds as more and more join, until y are just short of 50.

Benetti said orchestra wants video to send a mess to music lovers that 'We need you, you need us, but we are all toger and with this music that we sent in Internet we can keep in touch with you and we hope to see you as soon as possible.'"

Benetti rearranged Ravel's music, chopping it down to just under 4 for this performance.

musicians got ir scores by email.

y also got an audio track to listen to through hephones as y played.

That audio included a previous recording of music and ticking sound of a metrome, to help musicians keep time and stay in perfect unison despite being scattered to winds.

One of violinists played outside, with a beautiful seascape as his backdrop.

Most of ors filmed mselves inside.

Unlike or musicians, Benetti couldn't take his hefty drums home when France went into nationwide lockdown on March 17.

So he improvised for video, enthusiastically pretending to bang two chairs in his living room with a lle and a wooden spoon, utensils he took from his kitchen.