Simon Rattle and the new London concert hall...

[verismissimo]

Anyone who describes himself as a "raconteur" is using two superfluous syllables.

I've an interesting story about that, ferney...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[Ferretfancy]

Having had the privilege of being allowed to walk about the RFH while people are playing on stage both before and after the acoustic revamp, I would say that the sound now is much more even. Before the refurbishment if one walked up the stalls towards the back while someone played on stage the volume would drop off massively when you got under the balcony, it still does BUT not to anything like the same extent.
There were some interesting things about this in the acoustics report that I was shown by a colleague (who could understand the maths).

The acoustic testing sessions were also very interesting.

We went to the test concert with the LPO just before the hall re-opened, and you are quite right there has been an improvement in general. It was quite a feat to make big structural changes to the auditorium without it being obvious. Essentially the hall is acoustically just a little too small and they can't do much about that.
There has been one improvement, and that is that players on the platform can now hear each other more easily, which I imagine helps a great deal with ensemble.

I'm very glad that the plans for changes to the Queen Elizabeth Hall have been sent back to the drawing board. I was amazed at one of the PR meetings to discover that there was no intention to improve the interior at all, apart from enlarging entrances. It would still be the same dark hangar as before. The idea of building a rehearsal greenhouse on the roof struck me as ludicrous, what's more, the architect's model was completely misleading. The vision of a cheerful piazza between the RFH and the QEH, with a flight of steps up to the entrance was intended to give a sense of happy involvement for the public. In fact, the distance between the two buildins is inly about thirty yards.

I'm not a keen skateboarder by the way !

[Darkbloom]

Listening to the BPO on Saturday in the RFH one has to ask again the question posed by Ferney upthread: Why is Rattle leaving the Berliners? He's had a Rolls Royce amongst orchestras, would he want to swap that for a Ford Mondeo? Rattle must be looking for a fresh challenge and the LSO, in the long term, isn't it. My thoughts have centred on him doing a Claudio Abbado by picking his own players and assembling his own orchestra in this country with a new hall. A post with the LSO might just be a short term way of eventually transforming the performance of classical music in the UK as a long term goal.

I think that is a very unfair comparison. One of the many revealing things Rattle spoke about in that recent documentary was how he recognised that the CBSO didn't have the tonal depth of, say the BPO, but took the qualities they did have and improved them to make something that had its own particular excellence. I think he called them a 'fine white wine' - as opposed to the full bodied red of the Berliners, presumably. I used to be dazzled by that very powerful, dark sound as well, but it isn't everything. I find it too heavy and slightly joyless in Bruckner, for example, and I would much rather hear Gunter Wand's recordings with his Cologne orchestra than the sumptuous accounts he gave in Berlin where he seemed inhibited and slightly bland.

Sometimes - too often, actually - I find myself admiring their playing without being moved by it. The recent Proms performance of the Firebird was a case in point. It is interesting that Jansons has left the RCO - another candidate for 'world's best orchestra' - and I wonder if they didn't both feel that they had gone as far as they could within those different traditions. Who knows what goes on in those rehearsals, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was a lot of 'we do it this way' about very great bands, who worry about anything that might tinker with their beloved sound.

On of the big gripes about orchestras today is that they all sound the same, and I think a lot of that is down to the assumption in the music business that anything that isn't in the style of Berlin is necessarily second-rate. Even the Czech Phil doesn't sound as distinctive as it did under Ancerl. The VPO and Dresden Staatskapelle are the only two I can think of who are totally distinctive, although even Vienna has lost their reedy oboe sound.

The BPO is one way, but the LSO would bring something different.

[french frank]

Thanks v. much for that, Db - and welcome to the forum !

[Richard Tarleton]

Thanks v. much for that, Db - and welcome to the forum !

Seconded!

I'm clearly in a minority here - I enjoyed the documentary on Rattle, he's always engaging to listen to, but I remain mystified by the decision to come all this way only for the BPO to do 7 Sibelius symphonies on the trot. I watched the 5-6-7- on BBC4 (in HD through my hi fi system) and was bored rigid. It seemed perverse and self-indulgent (on SR's part) in the extreme. I do remember Lorin Maazel doing a Sibelius cycle in the early 70's at the RFH, I probably reacted differently then.

<tin hat>

[Nick Armstrong]

Seconded!

I'm clearly in a minority here - I enjoyed the documentary on Rattle, he's always engaging to listen to, but I remain mystified by the decision to come all this way only for the BPO to do 7 Sibelius symphonies on the trot. I watched the 5-6-7- on BBC4 (in HD through my hi fi system) and was bored rigid. It seemed perverse and self-indulgent (on SR's part) in the extreme. I do remember Lorin Maazel doing a Sibelius cycle in the early 70's at the RFH, I probably reacted differently then.

<tin hat>

I need to introduce you to my dad. I got the 'bored rigid' thing from him at the weekend too! (and the first Sibelius I heard was his Beecham LP of No 2, way back in the day, at home!).

[jayne lee wilson]

I think that is a very unfair comparison. One of the many revealing things Rattle spoke about in that recent documentary was how he recognised that the CBSO didn't have the tonal depth of, say the BPO, but took the qualities they did have and improved them to make something that had its own particular excellence. I think he called them a 'fine white wine' - as opposed to the full bodied red of the Berliners, presumably. I used to be dazzled by that very powerful, dark sound as well, but it isn't everything. I find it too heavy and slightly joyless in Bruckner, for example, and I would much rather hear Gunter Wand's recordings with his Cologne orchestra than the sumptuous accounts he gave in Berlin where he seemed inhibited and slightly bland.

Sometimes - too often, actually - I find myself admiring their playing without being moved by it. The recent Proms performance of the Firebird was a case in point. It is interesting that Jansons has left the RCO - another candidate for 'world's best orchestra' - and I wonder if they didn't both feel that they had gone as far as they could within those different traditions. Who knows what goes on in those rehearsals, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was a lot of 'we do it this way' about very great bands, who worry about anything that might tinker with their beloved sound.

On of the big gripes about orchestras today is that they all sound the same, and I think a lot of that is down to the assumption in the music business that anything that isn't in the style of Berlin is necessarily second-rate. Even the Czech Phil doesn't sound as distinctive as it did under Ancerl. The VPO and Dresden Staatskapelle are the only two I can think of who are totally distinctive, although even Vienna has lost their reedy oboe sound.

The BPO is one way, but the LSO would bring something different.

A balanced view, and excellent good sense, Db...

Rattle's often disappointing Berlin Phil recordings suggest (to say the least) that he hasn't always been able to get what he wants from them. In an interview on the DCH, discussing Beethoven's 5th, he said that for 5 years after arriving in Berlin, "they would give me Furtwangler..."

[Richard Tarleton]

I need to introduce you to my dad. I got the 'bored rigid' thing from him at the weekend too! (and the first Sibelius I heard was his Beecham LP of No 2, way back in the day, at home!).

My compliments and a to your dad, Cali

[Darkbloom]

A balanced view, and excellent good sense, Db...

Rattle's often disappointing Berlin Phil recordings suggest (to say the least) that he hasn't always been able to get what he wants from them. In an interview on the DCH, discussing Beethoven's 5th, he said that for 5 years after arriving in Berlin, "they would give me Furtwangler..."

That was optimistic! And a very strange remark, when you consider that the two seem to be totally different in temperament. Rattle would never allow himself to give the kind of hair-raising performances that WF was capable of - he is too fastidious. I don't think anyone will ever hear a live performance as demonic as the wartime Brucker 9, or the Brahms 4 etc, and I don't think Rattle would want to conduct them like that anyway. The documentary, while being hagiography too often, did have some interesting moments. There was a clip of a young Rattle where he said that his greatest flaw was that he could 'love the music to death', and I think that is still true today. Whenever I hear him in interviews I always find myself wishing I liked his work more, as he is an admirable figure in so many respects.

[MrGongGong]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/11415737/Sorry-Simon-London-doesnt-need-another-concert-hall.html

Some hilarious comments after the article

Symphony Hall Birmingham might sound wonderful but inside it is visual candy floss and its location leaves much to be desired.

Is that the fact that it's in Birmingham ?

[Lento]

I found Ivan Hewett's article (which argues against having a new large London concert hall) thought provoking, though I'm not sure I entirely agree. Is he setting the bar too low by saying "But we don’t need the best, to appreciate the music. We need an acoustic that is sufficiently good not to get in the way of the music, which is undoubtedly what we already have, in the form of the concert halls at Barbican and Southbank"?

Nothing worse than a bar that is too low at a concert venue btw

[french frank]

"... I think it’s wrong-headed, because it confuses sound and music. Listening to orchestral music in a venue with perfect acoustics will give us a perfect sound, but in no way is that the indispensable sine qua non of having a great musical experience."

Yes, I've always thought that.

[Barbirollians]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/m...cert-hall.html

Some hilarious comments after the article



Is that the fact that it's in Birmingham ?

What a vacuous article - do the Barbican and Southbank advertise in the Telegraph by the way ? :wink eye:

I was struck when I went to see the CBSO in Symphony Hall for the first time how wonderfully the music came across . It is not confusing music with the sound it makes a la Beecham's quote but the fact that music makes so much more of an impact in a good hall . One wonders for example how many have been put off classical music by hearing it , when they are used to amplification , in a mediocre hall and have been underwhelmed .

[Nick Armstrong]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/m...cert-hall.html

Some hilarious comments after the article

Thank you for this link GG. The article is as Barb said vacuous in the extreme - (these seem to be tottering times for the Telegraph.)

However, the comments after are well worth reading, for substance as well as humour (I enjoyed "Leopold Stokowski was Len Stokes from Limehouse. My grandfather knew him!").

Erase the Barbican Conference Centre from the musical life of the country, I say again. (And I'm with "Figural" who says "I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve come out of a concert at the Albert Hall in tears, and it’s not always been because the music has moved me, the place is hell on earth. I don’t care about its historical or architectural value, it just doesn’t work for the purpose of a classical concert: hearing unamplified music clearly in a comfortable setting. It’s so damned uncomfortable I find it difficult to focus on the music. I’ve had enough of it.")