If you’ve ever wanted to see America’s most historic orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, raise your hand as you enter the plaza of Lincoln Center through the wide-open garage door. no one?
But yes. The main entrance of David Geffen Hall, home of the Philharmonic, is newly, completely and happily renovated after decades of waiting. And the weather was bright and mild during his week in New York. So as the audience streamed in for some of the first concerts in the refurbished hall, the interior lobby and exterior plaza merged without barriers.
Once inside the transformed auditorium, it’s a new degree of informality. The sprawling drab shoebox the city has known since 1973 as Avery Fisher Hall has been criticized since the building first opened as the Philharmonic Hall in 1962. The interior was destroyed several years before a major remodel was attempted.
500 seats and the proscenium have been removed. The stage is pulled out 25 feet forward and the seats are stretched around it. The once-dingy interior is now acres of honey-coloured wood, and the seating is decorated with floating petal motifs. A theater that once felt like miles from the back row to the timpani is now more intimate.
The sound is also familiar. Judgments about the hall’s acoustics are very tentative after just a few visits. Opening October for the rest of his event, and for the rest of this season, we’ll be listening to the Philharmonic Orchestra play at the new girlfriend Geffen, sitting here and there to hear how the experience changes. Orchestras change and adapt to their homes, just as players adapt to new instruments.
But significant improvements are already evident. The post-1976 hall’s acoustic problems are probably exaggerated. It sounded worse, at least in part because it looked and felt worse, especially as it got older.
The sound is much more direct and warm, as is the whole experience there. We hear with our eyes as well as our ears, and just looking at our fellow audience members sitting on and around the stage makes Geffen’s voice sound more human.
On Wednesday, the third movement of John Adams’ My Father Knew Charles Ives, the Philharmonic Orchestra’s first subscription program, showcased magical orchestral alchemy in the Great Hall . The bass growl was not only audible, it was palpable. Like the catacombs of Respighi’s “Pines of Rome” the gloomy opening of his section or the obscure haze of Tania’s Leon’s “Stride”, the sound is shimmering and lucid in quiet dynamics all night long. did.
The Philharmonic Orchestra, at its loudest and densest, brass and percussion dominated woodwinds and strings, seeming harsh and ringing rather than richly coherent and blended. If that’s the case, it might be less than the wreckage of the infamous orchestra rather than the inherent quality of the room. Blunt and punchy style.
The style was not always discouraged by Jaap van Zweden, who made it to the podium for two more seasons as music director, but it evolved in part because of the shortcomings of the old hall and the need to reach farther upstream. . But what felt necessary just to hear in the previous space could be beneficially mitigated in this new space. The Philharmonic Orchestra no longer needs to blast to a faraway audience, but can perform as if it were sharing the music with a large group of friends gathered around a campfire.
It was a long journey to that campfire. Most observers quickly realized that the 1976 renovation, which built a new theater in the shell of the 1962 building, had not solved the hall’s acoustic problems and introduced new aesthetic problems. But that will did not exist, and the relationship between the Philharmonic Orchestra and its landlord, Lincoln Center, was too dysfunctional to do much about it.
At the turn of the 21st century, plans emerged to completely demolish the building and start over, but the Philharmonic Orchestra was horrified by the prospective cost and duration of the plan, and decided to relocate to Carnegie Hall, the former home of Lincoln Center. I tried to move. was built. That escape failed miserably, leaving Avery Fisher Hall as the center’s problem child and neglected in a six-year sweeping campus-wide renovation that ended in 2012.
In 2015, David Geffen restarted the Hall Project with a donation of $100 million. Avery minus his $15 million he needed to buy off Fisher’s heirs. But the design, which was developed with the help of Geffen’s donation, once again got out of hand with ambition and price tag.
It wasn’t until a few years ago that two practical chief executives, Deborah Borda of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and Henry Timms of Lincoln Center, arrived that a viable project became a reality. finally agreed. And when the pandemic canceled performances, construction moved quickly enough to allow him to open two years ahead of schedule without exceeding the $500 million budget.
All that remains of the 1960s Auditorium is the zigzag ceiling, hidden behind a billowing silver sheath painted black. However, in one important sense, this is a restoration. The hall he seated 2,200 (in 1962 he started with 2,700) and eventually the acoustics reached their originally designed capacity.
By pulling the stage forward and surrounding it with seating, the new theater, designed by Gary McCluskie of Diamond Schmitt Architects and with sound by Paul Scarbrough, has been workshopped in a temporary structure at Lincoln Center for more than a decade. I borrow the approach. Mozart Festival in summer. Its setup was inspired by the “Vineyard” seating at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, designed by the Berliner Philharmoniker and its most famous American descendant, Frank Gehry.
If Disney’s flair is lacking, the clean and candid Geffen Auditorium is more successful than the hall’s public spaces, which were redesigned by Todd Williams and Billy Tsien. , in order. The ticket office has been moved to a corner, allowing the lobby to extend farther back from the square, making the space less crowded and now more inviting to linger. much more expansive. At the corner of 65th Street and Broadway is a small performance space visible from the street.
But the eclectic décor—like the vaguely tree-shaped light fixtures on the ground-floor balcony and the curved sofas that dot the lobby—sets vivid collision patterns and the image of a Marriott, college student center, or university. has the general eccentricity of New Delta Sky Club in LaGuardiaThe champagne-colored curtains that surround the Grand Promenade are stitched with light-catching gold flecks, bathed in the constant deep blue light of the catering hall’s cocktail hour, giving these spaces a mass-market feel as well. It’s brewing.
A week later, the frosted glass spans around the promenade are already dirty. This is a little uncomfortable and a little charming. His new Geffen Hall already feels comfortable and welcoming. That seems to be the point. After all, Marriotts, student centers and airport lounges are designed to be the antithesis of the intimidation often associated with classical music. Was it not?
Some of the ways the new hall is meant to accommodate a wider audience already feel compelling. The concert hall quality of unamplified music is no indication that it will also work when amplified. Side by side, the new Geffen is equally good unamped and unamped.
“San Juan Hill: A New York Story,” a multimedia excavation by Etienne Charles, the history of the neighborhood demolished to build Lincoln Center, officially opened its halls on Saturday. The amplified sound was direct yet resonant. Even just a few fingers of Charles are enough to strike the registered drums.
And on Tuesday, mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile invited a few guests to the first of a series of events this season modeled after bluegrass jam sessions. The singer of the band Tune-Yards, Merrill Garbus took to the stage wearing bright green socks, so did Thile. The sound is crisp and soft, and the moody lighting is tastefully done.
It was amazing and delightful that Geffen Hall became a place where artists could walk around the stage in their socks and groove quietly like a small jazz club. There was no vague embarrassment on Tuesday that the orchestra hall was slumming with pops. Geffen felt and sounded natural.
Near the end of the show, Thile peers into the darkness and smiles broadly. “Let’s do more of this,” he said.