Richard Morrison: Yes, but does he sleep with the sopranos?

It certainly didn’t look like the average conductor.

Standing at just four feet and three inches tall, shiny, white, and with a blank visor instead of a face, the robot called ‘Asimo’ looked more like a Hollywood special-effect.

But that did not stop it from conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a record-breaking performance of The Impossible Dream from the Broadway musical Man of La Mancha.

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“Hello, everyone,” said Asimo before the music began, with a friendly wave to the orchestra.

And yet the performance was in many ways a brilliant counterfeit.

In spite of Asimo’s remarkably fluid movements—humanlike would be a bit of a stretch—it was able only to mimic the actions of Charles Burke, the Detroit Symphony’s education director, who had videotaped himself conducting the same piece six months earlier. The tape was used by human programmers to instruct Asimo, because it is unable to respond to the musicians themselves.

Not that anyone would have known. The robot, designed by the Honda Motor Company, nodded its head, gestured with both one or both hands, and took a final bow at the end of the performance. Cued via remote control, Asimo even managed to slow the orchestra down for a big finish, moving into 6/8 time and ending with a dramatic long note.

“It is absolutely thrilling to perform with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra,” said Asimo, when the performance was over. “This is a magnificent concert hall.”

The musicians themselves seemed to enjoy the experience. “The nice thing about this conductor is that it always does the same thing twice,” said one trumpeter.

And in spite of a botched rehearsal - the orchestra lost its place when Asimo slowed the tempo - the performance was seamless enough to make the soloists worry about any future technological developments. “I’m worried they’ll teach it to multitask,” said Yo-Yo Ma, the world-renowned cellist.

The rest of the concert was led by the Detroit Symphony’s resident (and humanoid) conductor, Thomas Wilkins.

A spokeswoman for Honda, Alicia Jones, said it was the first time that ASIMO had ever conducted an orchestra, and was probably the first time that any robot had presided over a live musical performance.

But several musicians also said that Asimo was more realistic than they expected.

With no ego, eccentricities or outlandish demands, Asimo the robot has important advantages over his human colleagues in the conducting field, but orchestra directors are not feaful for their livelihoods.

Leonard Slatkin, musical director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, is unruffled. “I wasn’t worried before, and I’m not after,” he told The Times. “It can’t do anything of a spontaneous nature at all. It does a good job of imitating the gestures we use as conductors. But when it comes to the actual art of conducting process, I would be surprised if it could ever be replicated because it is a two-way process.”

“It is amazing to watch but it doesn’t have communicative skills and I don’t think it ever will.”

Asimo is also more choosy about the type of pieces it will perform, Mr Slatkin said. “Its battery runs out after 20 minutes, so he’s not going to get through a Beethoven symphony.”

Geoffrey Owen, head of artistic planning for the Manchester-based Halle Orchestra, was unimpressed with the idea. “I won’t be booking him,” he said. “It seems to me that a good conductor needs a musical ear and be able to translate his musical vision to an orchestra with gesture, eye contact, and most of all personality. It’s very subtle.”

Honda brought the robot to Detroit to highlight a $1 million gift to the Detroit Symphony for a music education fund.

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