New concert hall for New York: finally better acoustics in Geffen Hall? | News and criticisms | CLASSIC BR

New Yorkers have described the Philharmonie’s miserable acoustics in Lincoln Center as a “curse”. Now the concert hall has been completely redesigned. The acoustics dug deep into their makeup bag.

When the New York Philharmonic opened its new location at Lincoln Center in 1962, invited guests came to Beethoven’s symphony in foot-length dresses and tailcoats. After the first major refurbishment in 1976, Brahms was on the schedule – dress code: only tuxedos and a decent evening gown. 46 years later, the organizers have completely given up on dress codes. And so, at the big reopening on Saturday, sneakers and hooded sweatshirts were on display. Which also went well with the music.

Opening concert as a multimedia event

Etienne Charles performs with his “Creole Soul” sextet and the New York Philharmonic. | Image Source: Picture Alliance / Pacific Press | Lev Radin

Instead of performing a classical symphony concert, Lincoln Center commissioned his own composition: Trinidadian jazz trumpeter Etienne Charles, who presented his first orchestral composition with “San Juan Hill: A New York Story”. Played not only by the New York Philharmonic, which found a new home in the David Geffen Hall – now named after the main sponsor – but also by Charles’s “Creole Soul” sextet. A mixture of jazz and orchestral music – staged as a multimedia event: photos, videos and interview sequences were projected on a screen above the stage.

The immigrant district had to give way to high culture

The inglorious story of how Lincoln Center was born is told. Before New York’s High Culture Temple was built here in May 1959, the area was home to immigrants from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and southern blacks. San Juan Hill was one of Manhattan’s liveliest neighborhoods until the city government declared it a “slum,” relocating 7,000 families and flattening blocks. “We should always consider: who lived where we are now? So that terrible things like this don’t happen again,” Etienne Charles told the premiere visitors on their way home. For him, the concept of “urban renewal” is just a euphemism that has been used in the United States. “It’s something we should think about.”

Open lobby area designed to attract new audiences

Image source: Picture Alliance / NDZ / STAR MAX / IPx

With this musically unusual new beginning, the New York Philharmonic wants to appeal to a new audience. Many concerts are no longer sold out. The average visitor is 57 years old and mostly white. And so the architecture should also ensure that it becomes more open: “The lobby should be open all day,” explains Gary McCluskie of Canadian architects Diamond Schmitt, who designed the $ 550 million conversion. “The lobby is a public space with a 15 meter video screen. The shows are broadcast live. People can come here and discover the Philharmonic without going to a show. We hope to find a new audience to appeal to with this space. public in here. “

Bad acoustics in Lincoln Center’s Old Hall

Another attempt to free the Lincoln Center Philharmonic from its “curse”, as New Yorkers call it: the legendary miserable sound, which hardly improved even after the 1976 renovation. Unlike then, this time the acoustics had the ultimate word: “One of the problems was that there were simply too many seats for the size of the concert hall,” says Paul Scarbrough of Acoustics. “As a result, the resonance or reverb in the hall suffered and was not as great as it would have been for symphonic music.”

New concert hall for a smaller audience

A result of the collaboration between architects and acousticians: the completely gutted and then redesigned concert hall has room for only 2200 visitors instead of 2738. Nothing else even remembers the old hall: the stage has been moved almost eight meters forward to accommodate The To bring the orchestra closer to the audience: “Also, visitors will notice that there is a large canopy on the stage with ten different elements that you can use to fine-tune the acoustics of the room,” says Scarbrough. In addition, the entire room is clad in honey-colored beech wood, some very smooth, others very structured. “This mimics the mix of flat and decorated surfaces found in historic halls such as those in Vienna and Amsterdam.”

The sound in the new room should be clearer and more direct

The new Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center opened on October 8, 2022. | Image source: Picture Alliance / NDZ / STAR MAX / IPx

Scarborogh purposely built a 1:20 scale walk-in model of the new hall in Connecticut to use small sound sources and probe microphones to simulate how music will sound in different areas of the hall. The acoustic is certain that the sound of the new Geffen Hall will finally be clearer and more direct. If the curse of sound is actually banished, it will only become evident in the next few weeks. After the opening concert with its blend of DJ-amplified jazz and non-amplified orchestral music, it’s hard to judge.

Transmission: “Leporello” on 11 October, from 4:05 pm on BR-KLASSIK