To what extent does the concert hall influence your reception of music? “Simply speaking, the hall is the instrument of the orchestra,” states Christoph von Dohnanyi--the chief conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony, “If you mess it up, the orchestra will be a mess."
The recent rethinking of the concert halls has challenged the conventional designs as being voluminous, high and rectangular spaces. Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, to a great degree, epitomizes the imagination of the new era. The major ongoing projects include Elbe Philharmonic Hall in Hamburg, Germany by Herzog and de Meuron, and Paris Philarmonie by Jean Nouvel. Here the question arises: Will the new architecture for concert halls attract bigger audiences? The early 2010s will prove whether these radical projects will rack up success, or not.
Nicolai Ouroussoff from NY Times discusses the previous and contemporary interplay between architects and acousticians; follow the link.
