Cautionary Tale

[Ferretfancy]

We went to the Festival Hall tonight for a concert by the LPO and Jurowski, but had the misfortune to be seated in what must have been two of the worst seats in the house, LL 41 &42 in the Rear Stalls, about halfway back under the Balcony overhang.

The first item, the Suite from The Love of Three Oranges sounded passable, as this is mostly brash and noisy music but fun to hear. I was puzzled by the almost complete lack of bass, but things were much worse when Emmanuel Ax played Stravinsky's Capriccio. In all the louder passages he might just as well have not been there, and when the piano was audible it had a curiously honky tonk quality.

I was very depressed by this, so in the interval I went down to the Box Office. They dealt courteously with my complaint, but said that I would have to pay for an upgrade. I pointed out that the concert was already half over, and so they agreed to change our seats, offering two very nice front stalls at no extra cost.

It turned out that our new seats were £4 special offers for orchestra friends !

Mr Ax then gave us a beautifully deft performance of the Haydn Piano Concerto in D, in a warm spacious acoustic, and the concert ended in a stunning performance of the Shostakovich 6th

Now, how many millions did the refurbishment cost to make a piano inaudible?

If we complain politely when faced with bad sound, perhaps the management might wake up to the awful shortcomings on the South Bank, which I have been visiting regularly for nearly sixty years. It had its faults before, and no doubt there has been some general improvement, but in my experience it's awfully patchy.

[Mahlerei]

Had a similar experience at a Muti concert shortly after the refurb was completed. Even allowing for the conductor's tendency to overdriev the music I was shocked by the brash, bass-light sound. Can't remember the row/seat numbers but it was roughly where you were tonight. I'm glad it's not all that grim.

[Petrushka]

I had a terrific seat (Box 39) for the recent BPO/Rattle Mahler 3. Never having sat in the boxes before I wasn't expecting much so had a pleasant surprise. Great view, great sound, great performance, what more can you ask?

[Ferretfancy]

Petrushka

I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed your box seat, because we are booked for a box in October, so it's good to learn that the sound is good. My point really was that after the enormous overhaul, which amongst other things involved the removal and re-instatement of the entire floor of the stalls, the sound is still so variable. The side walls which support the boxes were filled to make them solid, the ceiling was raised, a new canopy designed, and after all this, finding a good seat is still a lottery!

[Dave2002]

Ferret

We went to hear Kurt Masur at the RFH some years ago, before the refurb. We took up an offer with Last Minute to get "the best available seats", and ended up stuck under the balcony near the back. It really was a dreadful concert, but I'm not sure how much was really due to the orchestra and conductor. Perhaps if we'd had seats nearer the front it would have had much more impact and vitality. I was really interested as a musician friend had told me some while back that Masur got a very distinctive and impressive sound from orchestras - but that all gets wasted if the acoustics are poor.

Also, there were empty seats, and clearly some in better locations than ours.

We complained to Last Minute, and were fobbed off with a very lame excuse, which was all the more annoying as we had actually walked past the RFH a day or two before the concert and could just as easily have gone in and ordered tickets, hopefully to our satisfaction at no greater cost.

I have never been impressed with the sound in the RFH under the balcony.

[gradus]

I think the seats you describe are in what was called the Terrace at one time and I always avoided it because of the dead sound that somehow seemed to be caused by the Grand Tier overhanging the seats.
Neither would I buy a seat in the Stalls Circle at the ROH, particularly right hand side facing the stage, I've been there a couple of times and the sound is abysmal - no dynamic, very dry, boxy and without any bass.
Similarly I would now avoid orchestral and band concerts in St Pauls, having bought Transept seats at what turned out to be an Eton Mess of noise, supposedly a concert celebrating Duke Ellington's Sacred Music 3 or 4 years back.

[MrGongGong]

Having had the unusual opportunity to walk about the RFH during several rehearsals I an struck by the amount that the balcony (both pre and post rebuild) changes the sound, the volume drops massively. I also went to some of the acoustic tests after they had finished the refurb and there IS a huge difference now IMV (I did have a look at the acoustics report with someone who understands the equations !). There are some parts of the hall that it is impossible to get a balanced sound in , same as everywhere really though some of the more expensive seats don't sounds as good as some of the cheap ones. For big orchestral music the front of the balcony is good as are the stalls BUT not in the very front ones. The RFH refurbishment has made a big difference if you stand on the stage (not many people do that on a daily basis as well as changing the "evenness" of the hall as a whole.

[Ferretfancy]

MrGongGong

At one of the RFH test concerts before the re-opening, I spoke to one of the LPO cellists and said that I thought there was an improvement but the playing sounded rather forced. He said that this was possibly because the players tended to try to over project because because before the alterations they had to push the sound to hear each other, and now they no longer needed to. My basic feeling is that there is some extra warmth and resonance in the auditorium, but you have to look for good positions, it's very uneven. Anyway, lesson learnt, I will never sit under the balcony overhang again.

[Simon B]

Being of an acoustically fussy disposition, I have a golden rule in this regard which is to never sit under anything, anywhere. The obvious exception to this is the ceiling, but even that's best given the widest berth possible.

The seats under the balcony at the RFH always were acoustically abysmal, and I'm not surprised that they still are. Having said that, I've not experienced what they're like for many years, since if they're the only seats available, I'm staying at home.

I don't much like anywhere in the circle/upper circle/grand tier in Symphony Hall Birmingham for similar reasons (though on the whole the acoustic there is in an entirely different league). The boxes in the RAH are a dead loss IMO, again for the same reason. Similar things apply in the ROH and Coliseum - except that in the ROH unless you're of a wealthy disposition it can't really be avoided. And to be fair, at least further forward in the amphitheatre the acoustic is pretty good despite the proximity of the ceiling. Likewise, the same is true at Leeds Town Hall and the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. The downstairs bits that have a tier above them = not good.

I'm not an acoustician, but my naive explanation is based on elementary physics. The wavelength of the very low frequency end of acoustic instruments (particularly basses, organ, bass drum etc) which are so important to a real sense of immediacy and involvment is 30 feet or more. If you're out in the open part of an auditorium there's plenty of room in every direction in 3D space for modes of vibration of an entire wavelength at these frequencies. If you're under a tier, in many directions many of the lower frequency modes of vibration will be severely attenuated or not possible. You might even be struggling for a quarter-wave mode (about 8 feet at 30Hz) in the vertical direction. Also, at all frequencies, the sound from the stage is going to reach the listener sat under a tier more from approximately line-of-sight directions rather than reflections from all around as in the case of someone sitting in the open in the middle of the hall. This compromises richness and a sense of being enveloped in sound.

All of the above could be completely wrong (acoustics is an incredibly complicated business) as someone who does know what they're talking about might be along to point out shortly. But as far as I'm concerned, my ears don't lie. So, for whatever reason, sitting under bits of building = a bad idea if you want to hear what's going on on stage!

[Nick Armstrong]

Being of an acoustically fussy disposition, I have a golden rule in this regard which is to never sit under anything, anywhere. The obvious exception to this is the ceiling, but even that's best given the widest berth possible.

The seats under the balcony at the RFH always were acoustically abysmal

Totally share your view Simon B

Another reason I would add for not sitting under a balcony etc, is that the intrusive sounds of one's less self-disciplined fellow audience members are magnified, the sound bouncing back down from the low 'ceiling'. On the rare occasions I've made the mistake of sitting 'under', I've been aware of gruntings, rustlings, snorings, page-turnings far more than in 'open space' - quite apart from coughs and sneezes, which can seem deafening. Never again!

[Ferretfancy]

At last night's magnificent concert with the Bavarian RSO at the RFH, we were halfway down the front stalls in the first two seats on the side aisle and it was fine. I found the sound in the Beethoven perhaps a bit too emphatic, but that may have been the performance, with very bold playing from Mitsuko Uchida. Heldenleben after the interval was superb,perhaps the very large forces involved added some extra resonance.
In general, I feel that the improvements are real, but not uniform, and there is a tendency for woodwind to be too piercing, but that was certainly not the case last night.