Disney Concert Hall Opens To Raves All Around (1 Viewer)

[Peter Kline]

The opening night concert broadcasts of Oct. 23, 24 and 25 can be heard at www.kcrw.org



From The New York Times Architechture Critic:

October 23, 2003

ARCHITECTURE REVIEW

A Moon Palace for the Hollywood Dream


By HERBERT MUSCHAMP

LOS ANGELES — Walt Disney Concert Hall, the new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is a French curve in a city of T squares. The T squares are loving it madly. Why shouldn't they? Disney Hall was designed for them. It's a home for everyone who's ever felt like a French curve in a T square world.

Designed by Frank Gehry, the $274 million hall opens on Oct. 23. Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Philharmonic's charismatic young music director, will conduct "The Rite of Spring." Wrong season, right rite: Disney Hall is a riotous rebirth. Not just for downtown Los Angeles, where the building is situated, and not just for the whole sprawling mixed-up La-La. What is being reborn is the idea of the urban center as a democratic institution: a place where voices can be heard.

Disney Hall has at least a dual personality and moods enough to spare. On the outside it is a moon palace, a buoyant composition of silvery reflected light. Inside, the light shifts to gold.

Complete article is here.

 

[ThomasC]

Man, I wish I could be there for The Matrix Revolutions premiere.

 

[Jack Briggs]

There are, however, some voices of dissent, chief among them an architecture critic with whom I used to share space in an area newspaper. Gehry called this former associate of mine "you little [expletive]" when he encountered him at a recent press event.

Peter, why don't you repost that image of the building's eye-catching facade?

 

[Seth--L]

While I have not been to the hall in person, from pictures I'm not that impressed. It looks like mid 60s expressionistic modernism with less right angles and more curves - basically a more curvy version of the Philharmonie in Berlin.

The more important issue is how good are the aucostics.

 

[Peter Kline]

It's funny. Architechture is a very personal thing. It seems to be a profession full of jealousy. So be it. The musicians of the LA Philharmonic say the accoustics are incredible. They say they can actually hear the other orchestra members for the first time. Some have commented that they will have to hold back and not play so loud as they had to at the Dorothy Chandler because of the lousy accoustics there. Time will tell how things develop. There is no perfect accoustical performance space, only those approaching it. As far as the Matrix playing there, it's a thank you to the producer who donated money for the building. Movies will not play there regularly. It's for live music.

As far as the outside of the building, there are dozens of photographs that show it to be ever changing in its looks depending on the angle and time of day you are looking at any particular part of the structure. I'm told one needs to walk around it, through it and whatever to get the right feel. Photos cannot do it justice.

 

[ChrisMatson]

More about the building itself here:
http://wdch.laphil.com/wdch/

 

[Seth--L]

Perfect: Musikverein, Vienna; Carnegie Hall, NYC; and eventually Verizon Hall, Philadelphia (a technological breakthrough with it's moveable ceiling and reverberation chambers).

 

[Peter Kline]

Seth,

Those places are not perfect for every ocassion and every type of music performance. They are as close as you can get to the ideal for many types but not all. Carnegie Hall is not good for small chamber groups so they built a special small hall in the complex which is said to be one of the best in the world. Until prominent critics and music lovers have heard Disney Hall, as I said, the jury is still out I'd say. But it is promising.

 

[Seth--L]

Peter,

The Musikverein is about as perfect as it gets. Scientists have traveled the world to study its acoustics since it was completed in 1870. It's one of the few halls in the world that is able to be used as a recording studio.

What's brilliant about Verizon Hall is that the hall can be adjusted to number of performers playing in it through adjusting the ceiling highest and number of open reverberation chambers.



Huh? I don't know where you got this idea. The new hall (really the oldest, just renovated) is a multi-purpose room, meant for educational type programs, non-classical music, and multi-cultural events. Soloists and chamber groups that in the past had performed in the main hall will continue to do so.

 

[ThomasC]

Verizon Hall? Oh boy...

It must be said...

Can you hear me now?

 

[Seth--L]

ThomasC,

Yeah, nothing escapes being branded a corporate name...

 

[ThomasC]

It's not that, it's the catch phrase. If it was Cingular, Nextel or whatnot, it wouldn't have been the same.

 

[ColinM]

Exterior - I know what I like when I see it - and that ain't it.

Interior - WOW - did you see the pipe organ?

 

[Peter Kline]

From Los Angeles Times:

A Wonder of Sound and Magic

The hall lives up to its expectations with the flawless 'Rite of Spring.'
By Mark Swed
Times Staff Writer

October 24 2003

Three times Stravinsky's always shocking "Rite of Spring" has made history. The first was when its Paris premiere caused a riot 90 years ago. The second came with its inclusion 61 years ago in "Fantasia," the animated film in which great orchestral music and wider popular culture met and found they liked each other.

The third time was Thursday night. Brilliantly played by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the end of the gala opening concert of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Stravinsky's revolutionary ballet score answered the one question skeptics keep asking about Frank Gehry's revolutionary new building: Can it possibly live up to expectations?

If those expectations are that a concert hall can improve the world, who knows? Maybe. But if those expectations are better ones — that a spectacular venue with vivid acoustics can make the experience of music so immediate that sound seems to enter a listener's body not through just the ears but through the eyes, through every pore in the skin — then, yes, Disney Hall is everything and more than we might have hoped for. In this enchanted space, music can take on meaningful new excitement even in an age when many art forms are satisfied with oversaturated stimulation.

The rest of the article here:

http://www.calendarlive.com/cl-et-re...0,852611.story

P.S. The Carnegie Hall complex has 3 stages. Carnegie (Issac Stern Auditorium), Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall (new) - the latter two for smaller groups. As far as "perfect" sound, OK Seth - if you insist! (I remember going to Carnegie before the restoration and feeling (and hearing) the subway rumble under it. During recording sessions they used to keep tabs of the train schedule to stop at the appropriate time. No more rumble now.

 

[Peter Kline]

For movie music fans (any out there?) Saturday nights Gala broadcast over the internet at KCRW (some local NPR radio stations may also offer the broadcast):

Saturday, October 25
7 pm Inaugural Gala Concert III: Soundstage LA Host Tom Hanks; special guests Josh Groban, Audra McDonald, Steven Spielberg and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Esa-Pekka Salonen and John Williams conduct a program of music created for Hollywood film. Highlights: World Premiere of Soundings by John Williams. Music by renowned film composers Korngold, Newman, Rozsa, Waxman, Steiner, Hermann, Bernstein and Goldsmith, plus songs made famous in the movies. Hosts to be announced.*Produced by Ben Roe for NPR.

 

[Paul McElligott]

The outside of the place looks like a bunch of six graders threw away the building and kept the boxes it came in.