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April 10, 2005
Rem Koolhaas Learns Not to Overthink It
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
PORTO, Portugal
FEW people would question the quality of Rem Koolhaas's mind: he has long been celebrated as one of architecture's most audacious thinkers. But his recently completed Casa da Musica here is something new for him - a building whose intellectual ardor is matched by its sensual beauty.
Set at the dividing line between the city's historic quarter and a
working-class neighborhood, the building houses a 1,300-seat performance
hall, rehearsal space and recording studios for the Oporto National
Orchestra. Its smoothly chiseled concrete form, pierced by the rigid
rectangular box of the main hall, is the most overtly seductive form Mr.
Koolhaas has created yet.
The project's sculptural qualities will inevitably draw comparisons to
Frank Gehry's exuberant design for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
Both were commissioned as part of a broader effort to revive industrial
port cities that have long been in decline; both are dazzling displays of
virtuosity.
But if Mr. Gehry's masterwork evokes the eruption of an unbridled id,
Mr. Koolhaas's creation is a more self-contained experience - one that
vibrates with emotional and psychological tensions. Its surprises reveal
themselves slowly, as if to draw you into a deeper unconscious experience.
In originality alone, it ranks with Mr. Gehry's 2003 Walt Disney Concert
Hall in Los Angeles and Hans Scharoun's 1960's-era Berlin Philharmonic as
one of the most important concert halls built in the last 100 years.
Strangely, the project started with a search for that most prosaic of
human needs: closet space. Mr. Koolhaas says the design originated in a
commission for a house he was designing in suburban Rotterdam several
years ago. The client, whom he describes as "a typical Dutch Calvinist,"
was obsessed with order and demanded a pure uncluttered living area. The
architect responded by creating a faceted concrete block with a void
drilled out of its core. The void was intended as the family area, with
the surrounding spaces absorbing the messiness of everyday life.
But the client dropped the project just as Mr. Koolhaas was entering a
design competition for the concert hall. Rather than abandon his design,
he blew it up in scale and adapted it: the core became the main
performance hall, with the foyers, rehearsal halls and offices packed into
the leftover space around it. The extreme shift in scale transformed an
expression of a single client's obsessions into a more dynamic communal
experience. Even so, the central themes remain the same: a rationally
ordered environment animated by the chaotic social and psychic forces
whirling around it.
Mr. Koolhaas begins by emphasizing the building's isolation. The
structure is set atop a carpet of soft pink travertine, like a cut jewel
displayed on a luxurious piece of fabric. At various points, the
travertine curves up to cover the structures scattered around the plaza -
a bus stop, a cafe, the entrances to an underground garage - as if these
practical elements were literally being swept under a rug.
Seen from a late-19th-century park across the street, the building has
an almost formal elegance. Yet as you circle around it, its canted walls
distort your sense of perspective, making it hard to get a sense of its
dimensions. From other angles, its faceted form juts out unevenly, so that
the entire structure seems oddly off balance.
As always, Mr. Koolhaas is inspired by a range of influences here, from
Oporto's rich Modernist tradition to the generic shopping malls that have
taken over the globe since the 1970's. The exterior's restrained elegance
nods to local architects like Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura,
whose abstract compositions also tend to reveal themselves gradually as
you move through them. But the concrete shell is also a mask - a
near-blank container that conceals a richer imaginative experience inside.
As soon as you slip through the entrance, a narrower staircase leads to
the lobby, which is punctuated by a window overlooking a row of town
houses. A videotaped panorama of the city flickers across a wall behind
the coat-check area. A second stairway sweeps up several stories before
disappearing behind the form of the main hall, hinting at unexpected
pleasures. Heavy concrete beams crisscross the space above, heightening
the sense of compression.
The layering of images, coupled with the sense that you are constantly
slipping around the building's edges, imbues the space with a subtle
erotic charge, as if the purity of the architectural spaces were being
infected by unconscious images, a swirl of fragmented memories and
repressed desires.
The main hall seems hyperrational by comparison. Since conventional
wisdom holds that acoustically, the world's best concert halls - Symphony
Hall in Boston, say - are built in the shape of a shoebox, Mr. Koolhaas
gives us a shoebox. Similarly, the seats are arranged with the precision
of an assembly line, in simple repetitive rows.
The relentless sense of order snaps us to attention, until we slowly
begin to notice the outside world gently seeping in once again. The walls
are clad in raw plywood decorated with a pattern of gold wood grain
enlarged to several times its natural size, once again distorting the
sense of scale. Oddly shaped windows cut into the walls afford glimpses of
silhouetted figures flickering by in various bars and V.I.P. rooms. A
replica of a Baroque organ decorated in ornate gold-and-blue swirls is
mounted on a wall near the stage, like something that was picked up on a
whim at a luxurious flea market.
Most breathtakingly, the walls at either end of the hall are made of
enormous sheets of corrugated glass suggesting the folds of a curtain. The
curved glass gives a distorted view of the city outside, so that the
entire room feels as if it is floating dreamily in the middle of the city.
But they also hint at Mr. Koolhaas's love of the forbidden corners and
social frictions that animate all cities. As you ascend the various foyer
levels, you pass through a series of rooms that could well have been
culled from the surrounding cityscape. A V.I.P. room, for example, is clad
in the elaborate blue-and-white tiles characteristic of the bourgeoisie's
traditional courtyards. Higher up, a more informal gathering area is
topped by a canted glass roof that slides back to reveal a spectacular
view of the city and the distant Atlantic Ocean. A trapezoidal terrace is
carved into a corner of the structure's roof.
Set in the odd leftover spaces between the form of the main hall and
the exterior shell, these rooms evoke pieces of the city that have broken
off and embedded themselves in the building's skin. Like the characters
and objects swept up by the tornado in "The Wizard of Oz," they bring to
mind the psychological and emotional residue spinning around in your head,
the scattered fragments of memory that shade experience.
Such fragments reflect Mr. Koolhaas's rebellion against the aesthetic
purity that was once a central part of the Modernist agenda, and the
perfectly engineered life it implied. Like many architects of his
generation, he views such purity as a form of repression. For decades, he
has sought to explore what the Modernists sought to ignore - the messy
social, psychological and economic realities outside the walls of the
rationalist modern boxes.
In the Oporto concert hall, the architect has found a perfect
expression for his vision. And the result suggests he has reached the full
height of his powers.
It could not come at a better time. Like many great talents, Mr.
Koolhaas has had mixed luck transforming his ideas into reality. Over the
years, his most beautiful work has often been for small private
commissions. And although he now seems to be breaking out of this trap,
most noticeably with the recent completion of the dazzling Seattle Public
Library, even his recent career is strewn with evocative designs that are
likely to end up only on museum walls.
His only significant project in Manhattan, for example, remains the $40
million shop he designed for Prada in SoHo, an overwrought space that had
the misfortune of opening a few months after the attack on the World Trade
Center. By comparison, a stunning design for a major addition that would
have given the Whitney Museum of American Art - and the city - a
much-needed creative jolt was rejected two years ago on the ground that it
would have been too expensive to build. To get a grasp on what they are missing, New Yorkers will now have to
board a plane to Oporto.
Klangkristall aus Beton
Die Casa da Música von Rem Koolhaas in Porto
Hubertus Adam, NZZ, 14. April 2005
Mit einem Konzert von Lou Reed wird heute Abend die Casa da Música in Porto eröffnet. Der Rotterdamer Architekt Rem Koolhaas hat zusammen mit seinem Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) ein kompaktes, polygonales Volumen entworfen, das in seinem Herzen zwei grosse Konzertsäle birgt.
Neben die Museen sind in den vergangenen Jahren die Konzertsäle,
Opernhäuser und Theater als Leitgattung der Architektur getreten. Bauten
wie Jean Nouvels Kultur- und Kongresszentrum in Luzern und Rafael Moneos
Kursaal in San Sebastián, Renzo Pianos Auditorium in Rom, Norman Fosters
Musikzentrum in Gateshead oder Frank O. Gehrys Walt Disney Hall in Los
Angeles erlangten weithin Beachtung. Konzerthäuser haben derzeit
Konjunktur; nicht ohne Grund widmete Kurt Forster, der Leiter der
letztjährigen Architekturbiennale, den wichtigsten zeitgenössischen Bauten
und Projekten für Musikveranstaltungen eine Sonderschau in Venedig.
Nun ist auch das Konzerthaus in Porto vollendet, das sich wie ein Meteorit
an der Rotunda da Boavista nordwestlich der Altstadt in den Boden gebohrt
hat. Casa da Música heisst das Gebäude offiziell, und der recht allgemein
klingende Name deutet auf eine flexible Nutzbarkeit, die mit dem
Raumprogramm intendiert wurde. So wird die Casa da Música zwar vom
Orquestre Nacional do Porto als dessen Hauptspielstätte genutzt, ist aber
kein ausschliesslich der klassischen Musik vorbehaltenes Haus. Rock- und
Pop-Veranstaltungen finden hier genauso statt wie Jazz Sessions oder
experimentelle Konzerte mit elektronischer Musik.
In einem Wettbewerb unter fünf Architektenteams konnten sich Rem
Koolhaas und sein Rotterdamer Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)
mit dem Vorschlag durchsetzen, die unterschiedlichen Nutzungsbereiche
nicht nebeneinander zu stellen, sondern in einem kompakten Volumen zu
bündeln. Ein gewaltiger polygonaler Kristall aus weissem Beton erhebt sich
an der Rotunda da Boavista, die nach der Revolution von 1974 als Ort eines
neuen Geschäftszentrums vorgesehen war. Daraus wurde indes nichts, und so
startete die Stadt 1999 mit dem Architekturwettbewerb für die Casa da
Música den neuerlichen Versuch, einen bisher wenig repräsentativen Teil
der Stadt aufzuwerten. Inzwischen ist die Transformation des Quartiers im
Gange, doch der hemmungslose Umgang der vor wenigen Jahren installierten
konservativen Stadtregierung mit der alten Bausubstanz ringsum stimmt
bedenklich: Wo einst einfache vorstädtische Wohnquartiere standen, wachsen
in Zukunft ungeschlachte Investorenbauten aus dem Boden. Und trotz seiner
exponierten Lage am Park der Rotunda da Boavista wird der Solitär der Casa
da Música zukünftig von Norden und Westen durch spiegelglasverkleidete
Bankpaläste in die Zange genommen. Dies ist umso betrüblicher, als Rem
Koolhaas mit seinem Konzept die Öffnung des Konzerthauses zur Stadt
anstrebt.
Schon zu Beginn der Planung stand fest, dass der grosse Konzertsaal mit
1300 Plätzen dem Prinzip der Schuhschachtel folgen sollte, das in
klassischer Form im Wiener Musikvereinssaal, im Concertgebouw Amsterdam
oder in der Boston Symphony Hall ausgeprägt ist. Nahezu im rechten Winkel
dazu stellte Koolhaas auf eine höhere Ebene das kleinere Auditorium und
umgab diese beiden Grundelemente mit einer Hülle aus weissem Beton, die
seitlich sowie über und unter den beiden Sälen unterschiedlich
zugeschnittene Raumbereiche entstehen lässt, welche die übrigen Funktionen
aufnehmen. Ursprünglich sei die Grundidee des Gebäudes für ein
Einfamilienhaus in Holland entwickelt worden, behauptet der sich gern
eines ultrapragmatischen Gestus befleissigende Architekt - «Copy and
Paste. How to turn a Dutch house into a Portuguese concert hall in under 2
weeks» heisst das entsprechende Kapitel in Koolhaas' vor zwei Jahren
erschienenem Bestseller «Content».
Angesichts früherer Projekte des Niederländers mag die Konzerthalle von
Porto zunächst überraschen. Der nicht realisierte Entwurf für das Zentrum
für Kunst- und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe bestand aus einer Stapelung
verschiedener Raumbereiche in einem gläsernen Turm. In Porto nun wendete
Koolhaas der Hüllform selbst eine Aufmerksamkeit zu, wie man sie von ihm
bisher nicht erwartet hat. Die eigentlich orthogonalen Boxen der
Konzertsäle sind mit einer kristallinen Schale umgeben, welche dem Volumen
jene einprägsame Gestalt verleihen, die für ein «Landmark Building»
erwünscht ist. Man mag an die kristallinen Visionen der
expressionistischen Architekten denken, und natürlich erinnert der Bau mit
seinen facettierten Flächen auch entfernt an Hans Scharouns Berliner
Philharmonie - auch wenn er im Inneren gerade das antithetische
Organisationsprinzip verfolgt.
Besteht also zunächst ein gewisser Widerspruch zwischen der boxartigen
Form der Säle und dem polygonalen Körper, so ist es dem Architekten
gelungen, aus dieser Disposition räumlich Kapital zu schlagen. Über eine
breite Freitreppe betritt man die Casa da Música von der Südseite aus und
gelangt in eine ausgedehnte Foyer-Zone. Über Treppenkaskaden und Podeste
wird der Blick in die Höhe gerissen, nach links führen die Stufen hinauf
zum oberen Eingang des Konzertsaals. Dieser ist gleichsam in westöstlicher
Richtung durch das Gebäude hindurchgesteckt und bestimmt somit dessen
Längsausdehnung. Anders als in den klassischen Sälen entschied man sich
hier für eine leicht ansteigende Anordnung der Sitzreihen, mit der
jenseits des Podiums die erhöhten Sitzplätze für den Chor korrespondieren.
Noch ungewöhnlicher aber sind die riesigen Glasfronten, mit denen sich der
Saal auf den Stirnseiten Richtung Stadt hin öffnet. Sitzt man im
Konzertsaal, so fällt der Blick durch die - aus akustischen Gründen -
gewellte Glasfläche im Osten auf die Rotunda da Boavista. Die schmalen
Räume zwischen den Glasfronten des Konzertsaals und der äusseren
Verglasung zur Stadt hin dienen zudem als attraktive Foyers; auf der
Rückseite wurde überdies auf halber Höhe des Fensters eine attraktive Bar
eingerichtet, die Blicke in den Konzertsaal und auf die Umgebung bis hin
zum Atlantik gleichermassen ermöglicht.
Auf eine wartungs- und kostenintensive Lösung, wie sie von dem
amerikanischen Büro Artek mit den Echokammern für Luzern entwickelt wurde,
haben die Akustiker von TNO Eindhoven in Porto verzichtet. Ziel war ein
Klangbild, wie man es von den orthogonalen Sälen des 19. Jahrhunderts
gewohnt ist, das aber etwas mehr an klanglicher Transparenz ermöglicht.
Modifikationen lassen sich durch ein verstellbares, mit Gas gefülltes
Element erzielen, das wie ein Baldachin über dem Orchester hängt - und
durch jeweils drei Vorhänge, die vor den Glasfronten abgehängt werden
können. Die Designerin Petra Blaisse vom Amsterdamer Atelier Inside
Outside entwarf Textilien ganz unterschiedlicher Qualität und Materialität:
geknüpfte Tücher, die auf einem Netz aufgezogen wurden, aber auch schwere
Stoffe, die partiell perforiert sind. Die Seitenwände und Decken des
Grossen Saals wurden mit Holzplatten versehen, auf welche ein grossflächig
verpixeltes Maserungsmuster in Gold aufgetragen ist. Formschön und
funktional sind die klaren orthogonalen, beige-ocker bezogenen Stühle mit
ihren nach vorne ausfahrbaren Sitzflächen; sie wurden von dem erst vor
wenigen Wochen verstorbenen Designer Maarten van Severen speziell für das
Konzerthaus entworfen.
Neben dem kleinen, rot ausgekleideten Konzertsaal, dessen eine
Glasfront sich zur Seite des Grossen Saals hin öffnet, birgt die
spannungsvoll- labyrinthisch organisierte Hülle der Casa da Música noch
andere Räume. Zum Beispiel einen mit Podesten versehenen Saal für
experimentelle Konzerte oder für Vorträge oder diverse Foyers, die mit
Fliesen ausgekleidet sind und damit portugiesische Traditionen zitieren.
Für die VIP- Lounge wählte Koolhaas sogar figürliche Azulejos.
Schliesslich befindet sich über dem Grossen Saal ein opulentes Restaurant,
das mit einer in die Dachfläche eingeschnittenen Terrasse aufwartet. Die
Garderoben und Probenräume für die Musiker, aber auch die Tonstudios und
die technischen Bereiche sind hingegen im Sockel angeordnet. Kurz: Porto
hat ein vielfältig nutzbares Haus für die Musik erhalten. Seine Qualität
besteht nicht zuletzt darin, dass sämtliche Konzertsäle und Musikbereiche
voneinander und von den Foyers akustisch abgeschirmt sind, so dass sie
gleichzeitig bespielt werden können.
August 14, 2004
Philharmonic Downshifts From Jet Travel to Buses
By JOHN ROCKWELL
When the New York Philharmonic announced last month that it was pulling out
of a planned tour to Spain and Italy in early September, little alarm
bells went off. This was the third tour that the Philharmonic had canceled
within a single year. What was going wrong? Had the touring of orchestras
become as economically unfeasible as live broadcasts and recording
contracts? Was the Philharmonic somehow mishandling its tour negotiations?
Was the orchestra outmoded and classical music dead, as people variously
fret these days?
"We feel insecure," said Newton Mansfield, a veteran first violinist and
member of the players' orchestra committee. Zarin Mehta, the
Philharmonic's executive director and president, he continued, "has fallen
victim to a whole set of circumstances over which he has little control.
But from the sidelines, we worry that the administration is not on as sure
a footing as it should be." Mr. Mehta is also concerned (not about his own
administrative skills; lack of self-confidence is not his problem) that
the current model for orchestra tours is outdated. "We need to make a
completely different concept of touring and of the way we finance the
tours," he said in an interview in his Avery Fisher Hall office. "We need
to plan far ahead and, if necessary, cut them off in time to plan
something different instead."
Mr. Mehta's new tour model involves multiple corporate sponsors; reducing
costs, for example, by taking buses instead of charter flights from city
to city; and a determination to cancel with ample time to plan New York
replacement concerts. Like so much else in the orchestral world, tour
financing began to sour in mid-2002, with the recession and fears of
terrorism. That was about the same time that several midlevel North
American orchestras began to threaten bankruptcy. At the Philharmonic,
Citicorp had been the principal sponsor for European, Asian and South
American tours for more than 20 years. The company had underwritten some
domestic tours, too, but found their corporate image more profitably
enhanced, Mr. Mehta said, when the orchestra performed abroad.
Through the Philharmonic's summer 2002 Asian tour, Citicorp and the
orchestra had friendly discussions, adjusting the subsidy depending on the
nature and extent of the tour and for inflation. But for the planned
October 2003 tour of Europe — the first of the three over the last year to
be canceled — Citicorp offered a flat fee based on the Asian tour. Given
inflation and the declining value of the dollar vs. the euro, the
orchestra couldn't make ends meet. "Our costs would have been $700,000
more than what the presenters and Citicorp offered, and we couldn't
possibly cover that," Mr. Mehta said. A planned West Coast tour in
February fell victim to a similar squeeze, although this time Citicorp was
not involved.
Michael Ecker, the producer of the Seville International Music Festival,
asserted recently that the Philharmonic had withdrawn from Seville because
the orchestra insisted that the festival cover lost fees from other tour
cities that had canceled. Mr. Mehta brushed that aside, suggesting that
Mr. Ecker had canceled the entire festival because of poor sales and shaky
financing. From the orchestra's point of view, a lost tour represents
primarily a loss of prestige; "ego" was Mr. Mansfield's word. Musicians
are paid on a 52-week contract, so unless a few minimize their personal
expenses and hence keep some of their per-diem money, the players receive
no extra compensation for a tour.
When a tour must be canceled, the administration tries to schedule
something in New York instead. In October, Lorin Maazel, the music
director, conducted what Mr. Mehta, with his characteristically dour
humor, called "our critically acclaimed Beethoven festival." In February
Itzhak Perlman came in to play the violin and conduct. Both substitute
series sold out. The cancellation of the September Spanish-Italian tour
came too late to replace it with something in New York, and the orchestra
is simply swallowing the contractual expenses. So now, Mr. Mehta is
looking ahead with his new tour model in mind. For a three-week tour of
Korea and Japan this October, he has solicited $200,000 each from five
corporations, including Citicorp. A Midwest tour in February will be by
bus. For a three-week European festival tour in late summer 2005, Mr.
Mehta is looking for a single sponsor, possibly Citicorp, but all travel
will be by bus or train.
The Philharmonic's need to tour is more acute than that of most American
orchestras, which have summer festivals like Tanglewood or Ravinia to fill
up some of their 52 contracted weeks. Mr. Mehta said he had cut back the
Philharmonic's 35-to-36-week regular season at Fisher Hall to 32 weeks.
("It was too long," he explained.) With five weeks of parks concerts and
new early-summer lighter fare in Fisher Hall, plus nine weeks of vacation,
six weeks are left to be filled with tours or other special events —
including, for the last two summers and the next, two weeks in Vail, Colo.
Feelings of insecurity aside, the Philharmonic players seem sanguine about
letting Mr. Mehta resolve the tour problem. Mr. Mansfield said the
question of tours had not played a major role in the negotiations for a
new contract; the old one expires on Sept. 21. Minor tour issues have
already been negotiated and resolved.
For the future, Mr. Mehta spoke of a European tour in November 2005; an
Italian tour in June 2006; a West Coast tour in November 2006 segueing
directly to Asia; and a European tour in May 2007. All are in various
stages of negotiation and planning but all will conform to Mr. Mehta's
model of multiple sponsors and as much surface transportation as possible.
"Touring is important for our image," Mr. Mehta said. "It builds pride in
the organization and among the musicians. Which is extremely important for
us and for them."
May 3, 2004
October 25, 2003
At New Disney Hall, the Time to Listen Has Finally Arrived
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
LOS ANGELES. Will
Walt Disney Concert Hall, the new home of
the Los Angeles Philharmonic, bring urban vitality to the city's
uninviting downtown area? Will it become the mission control center for
high culture in Southern California, solidify the reputation of Frank Gehry as the visionary architect of our time and make Angelenos better
people? All this and more have been hoped for in the rush of press
coverage in recent months.
Meanwhile back on the ground, Disney Hall finally and officially opened
with a gala inaugural concert on Thursday night (Oct 23). One thing is clear:
Los Angeles has itself a splendid and exciting concert hall for its dynamic
orchestra. After a week's worth of free preview performances for
schoolchildren and the general public, Thursday's gala was a red-carpet,
black-tie affair, which attracted a starry audience of celebrities and
statesmen from Warren Beatty to Warren Christopher. Mr. Gehry's stainless
steel spirals were flooded by colored spotlights, and a fireworks display
accompanied a post-concert dinner for patrons in a makeshift tent on Grand
Avenue, which was closed to traffic.
The question of the night, though, was: How does Disney Hall sound?
Already many concertgoers and critics have proclaimed it acoustical
nirvana. From this first experience I was impressed but not enthralled by
the acoustics. Some of the ecstatic reactions from musicians, subscribers
and critics are surely because of the immense improvement the hall offers
over the orchestra's old home across First Street, the cavernous and
acoustically indistinct Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
The feeling of the space itself is critical to the pleasure of hearing
music in the 2,265-seat Disney Hall, which is some 930 seats smaller than
the Chandler. Working closing with the acousticians Yasuhisa Toyota and
Minoru Nagata, Mr. Gehry has designed the auditorium in a way that makes
it seem almost intimate. The orchestra plays from a slightly raised,
proscenium-free stage surrounded on all sides by the audience. Even the
seats behind the orchestra, which cost as little as $15, will offer an
involving aural experience, not to mention the chance to face the
orchestra's kinetic and youthful conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen.
To show off the hall's acoustics and its suitability for ensembles of
different sizes, this program, "Sonic L.A," offered performances that
ranged from a solo voice — the jazz vocalist Dianne Reeves, singing "The
Star-Spangled Banner" unaccompanied — to a vehemently brilliant account of
Stravinsky's Rite of Spring for blazingly full orchestra. Yet while the
small-to-large programming concept may have seemed a good idea, it proved
problematic.
Standing at the front edge of the stage, Ms. Reeves sang the national
anthem with earthy expressivity, and her voice carried beautifully. Next
came the Preludio from Bach's Partita No. 3 for solo violin, performed by
Martin Chalifour, the orchestra's principal concertmaster. But it was a
mistake to place him in the organ loft above the back end of the stage,
for his playing sounded far off and small.
The Bach was followed by The Unanswered Question by
Ives. In this
quizzical work, a searching solo trumpet and a harmonically astringent
choir of winds pose unnerving musical questions over a bedrock of soft,
sustained strings playing unperturbed diatonic chords. The manuscript to
this work indicates that the strings should play offstage, as was done
here, but this setup never works in practice. They were almost inaudible.
And spreading the string players along the outside corridor of the lower
balcony must have made it hard for them to hear one another, for the
sustained chords kept slipping out of tune.
Next two groups of brass players faced off from opposite sides of the
balcony for a performance of a Gabrieli canzon, but their closeness to the
audience just made the music uncomfortably blaring. Though it was an
imaginative stroke to have the Los Angeles Master Chorale sing György
Ligeti's a cappella Lux Aeterna, a 10-minute work of rapturously
otherworldly sustained harmonies, placing the singers in the aisles on two
sides of the hall was a miscalculation. All I could hear were the close-up
voices of a handful of sopranos and high tenors standing right next to me.
With Mozart's Symphony No. 32 in G, an eight-minute, three-section work
originally intended no doubt as a opera overture, one finally gained a
sense of the hall's true acoustical properties. Because of its design, the
concert hall equivalent of theater in the round, the audience feels close
to the orchestra from almost every seat. This lent a visceral quality to
the Mozart, even the lyrically gracious slow middle section.
Still, the fullness of sound in a concert hall comes not just from the
proximity of the musicians or from sheer volume, but from richness and
resonance. The grand old halls, like Boston's Symphony Hall and of course
Carnegie Hall, positively shimmer with aural richness. During the Mozart,
the sound at Disney Hall, especially the string sound, lacked warmth and
bloom. The overall effect was full-bodied and clear but in a modern,
somewhat clinical way.
The modern aspects to the acoustics were a boon to The Rite of Spring.
You can tell how excited the musicians were to be playing this work in
this space. Textural details, especially softer ones, like the astringent
harmonies of the subdued woodwinds or the muted trumpets in the ruminative
introduction to Part 2, came through acutely. And in the long stretches of
pummeling, brutal music — for example, the thwacking percussion and
dizzying strings during the Dance of the Earth — the sound engulfed you
as it should but kept the intricacies audible.
The highest praise I can pay to Disney Hall, though, is that after a
while, caught up in Mr. Salonen's incisive, deftly colored, go-for-broke
performance, I completely forgot that I was supposed to be assessing the
acoustics. The next two programs, "Living L.A." and "Soundstage L.A.,"
should tell more.
10.Nov.2003
Wogende Wände
Frank Gehrys fulminantes Wahrzeichen für Los Angeles
Von Roman Hollenstein
Vor sechzehn Jahren wurde die Walt Disney Concert Hall, das neue Haus des Los Angeles Philharmonic, von Frank Gehry entworfen. Nach einer turbulenten Baugeschichte und vielen konzeptuellen Änderungen konnte das spektakuläre Gebäude vor zwei Wochen eröffnet werden. Mit ihm erhält Los Angeles ein neues Wahrzeichen.
Der Anblick ist betörend: Matt glänzende Wandflächen aus Edelstahl
wogen über einem Sockel aus hellem Stein, unter dem sich - wie in downtown
Los Angeles nicht anders zu erwarten - eine vielgeschossige Tiefgarage
verbirgt. Kaum vollendet, erweist sich der fulminante Bau der Walt Disney
Concert Hall auch schon als neustes Wahrzeichen einer Stadt, die aus dem
Auto erfahren werden will. Doch wird eine solche Wahrnehmung Gehrys
Geniestreich nur bedingt gerecht. Erst dem Flaneur erschliesst sich
nämlich der Zauber dieser gebauten Sinfonie, dieser kinetischen
Riesenskulptur, die (ähnlich wie die Stadt Los Angeles selbst) ihre
Erscheinung stets wandelt und doch gleich bleibt. Auch wenn das neue Haus
des L. A. Philharmonic kaum die Grossartigkeit des ebenfalls von Frank
Gehry entworfenen Guggenheim-Museums in Bilbao erreicht, so übertrifft es
dieses doch an Schönheit und Verführungskraft. Schwankend zwischen
Hochkunst und Hollywood-Kitsch, verkörpert das Konzerthaus wie kein
anderes Gebäude den auf Bewegung, Effekt und Show basierenden Genius loci
der südkalifornischen Riesenstadt. Es offenbart zudem, dass Gehry - wie
auch die ihm zurzeit im benachbarten MOCA gewidmete Schau zeigt - seit
Bilbao im Grunde den immer gleichen Bau verwirklicht: mit solcher
Hartnäckigkeit, dass er aus den rein künstlerischen Sphären, in denen er
sich zu drehen scheint, kaum mehr auf den aktuellen Architekturdiskurs
einwirken kann.
Als Gehry 1991 auf der fünften Architekturbiennale von Venedig die neusten
Entwürfe der Disney Hall vorstellte, hielt man das als gigantische
steinerne Blüte konzipierte Projekt für eine kalifornische Verrücktheit.
Doch gegenüber dem plumpen, eher an ein Shopping-Center denn an einen
Musentempel gemahnenden Vorschlag, welcher Gehry in dem 1987 (dank einer
50-Millionen-Dollar-Spende von Lillian Disney) lancierten Wettbewerb über
Böhm, Hollein und Stirling hatte triumphieren lassen, bedeutete es einen
grossen Fortschritt. Der lässt sich mit der späten Selbstfindung des heute
74-jährigen Architekten erklären: Seit dem «dekonstruktivistischen» Umbau
seines Wohnhauses in Santa Monica vor dreissig Jahren hatte sich Gehry
nämlich auf einer Gratwanderung zwischen Architektur, Kunst und Bricolage
befunden. Erst der Beizug des Computerprogramms CATIA im Jahre 1991
ermöglichte es ihm, seine Visionen - die sich in ungezählten Skizzen,
zerknüllten Papieren und Materialcollagen niedergeschlagen hatten - in
Bauten umzusetzen. Als dann die Auswirkungen der Rezession, der
Rodney-King-Unruhen und des Northridge-Erdbebens das Disney-Projekt im
Jahre 1994 zum Stillstand brachten, nutzte Gehry die Atempause, um über
dessen Erscheinungsbild nachzudenken. So fand er - zeitgleich mit dem
1991-1997 verwirklichten Guggenheim Bilbao - von einer steinernen Hülle zu
jenem viel leichter, selbstverständlicher und eleganter wirkenden
Schuppenkleid aus matt schimmerndem Metall, das seither zu seinem
Markenzeichen geworden ist.
Gehry, ein Meister des prozesshaft-intuitiven Schaffens, behielt von dem
in Venedig ausgestellten Entwurf nur den Konzertsaal bei: eine mit dem
Akustiker Yasuhisa Toyota erarbeitete Kreuzung der klassischen
Schuhschachtel mit Hans Scharouns Berliner Weinbergprinzip. An den leicht
eingeknickten quaderförmigen Saal fügte Gehry in der Art des synthetischen
Kubismus das Foyer, die gipsern flammende Grotte des Founders Room sowie
Arbeitsräume an und umspielte das Ganze mit gewaltigen Girlanden aus
Edelstahl, welche nun die im Grunde einfache Disney Hall hinter einer
aufsehenerregenden kubosurrealistischen Kulisse verbergen. Diese nimmt man
bald als silberne Seerose oder als Segelschiff in der endlos flutenden
Stadtlandschaft wahr, bald aber auch als Stadtkrone, die im harten
Mittagslicht weiss gleisst und bleigrau schimmert, um dann bei
Sonnenuntergang langsam zu verglühen. Auf den Höhen von Bunker Hill darf
dieses architektonische Kunstwerk nun als verspieltes Symbol der
Stadtwerdung und der kulturellen Reifung von «La-La-Land» in Erscheinung
treten.
Eine Freitreppe weist hinauf zur Plattform, auf der sich Gehrys 274
Millionen Dollar teure Bauskulptur erhebt. Von hier betritt der Besucher
zwischen stählernen Wogen und durch eine nicht ganz stimmige Glasfassade
das Foyer, sofern er nicht über die Rolltreppen direkt aus der Tiefgarage
ankommt. Der weisse, sich über mehrere Ebenen ausdehnende Eingangsbereich
wird von baumartigen Holzgebilden akzentuiert, in deren Ästen sich die
tragende Struktur, die Klimaanlage sowie Lichtquellen verbergen. Einzig
die sich zur Stadt hin öffnenden Glaswände erlauben einen Einblick in die
Konstruktion dieses futuristischen Gebäudes, das wie aus einem Stück
Metall gefräst erscheint, dessen eisernes Skelett letztlich aber auf den
Erkenntnissen des Eiffelturms aufbaut und formal einer Berg-und-Tal-Bahn
gleicht. Aus dem Foyer, das (im Gegensatz zur genialen Eingangshalle von
Bilbao) etwas gar unruhig und zerfahren wirkt, gelangt man in den
Konzertsaal - eine in ihrer Klarheit ebenso grossartige wie überzeugende
Raumschöpfung. Trotz Einfachheit und strenger Symmetrie wirkt der 2265
Plätze anbietende Saal weniger monumental als fast schon intim. Bei Tag
wird er von natürlichem Licht erhellt, am Abend aber verleiht ihm das Holz
der terrassenförmigen Weinbergbestuhlung und der baldachinartigen Decke
eine ruhige Atmosphäre, welche von der wie eine goldene Monstranz
strahlenden Orgel mit hollywoodesker Theatralik ins Quasi-Sakrale überhöht
wird.
Der Raum, den Gehry gerne mit einer hölzernen Barke vergleicht, zählt
nicht nur zu den stimmungsvollsten Musiksälen der jüngsten Zeit. Mit
seinem «Fülle, Wärme und direkt einwirkende Kraft» ausstrahlenden Klang (NZZ
28. 10. 03) vermag er auch die Musikkritiker zu überzeugen. Dürfte der
Konzertsaal eher eine musikalisch gebildete Elite ansprechen, so
begeistert die äussere, entfernt an das Opernhaus von
Sydney erinnernde
Hülle alle. Als leicht zugängliche Pop-Architektur, die von den Medien
unisono zum Meisterwerk erklärt wurde, soll die Disney Hall auch den
Zaungästen aus ärmeren Stadtteilen die Schwellenangst nehmen. Einladend
gestaltet wurden deshalb gerade auch die Gartenterrassen (mit dem
300-plätzigen Freilufttheater), die das Konzertgebäude auf zwei Seiten
umfassen und es vom fast schon schweizerisch einfachen Verwaltungstrakt
trennen. In diesem so gar nicht an Gehry erinnernden Gebäude befinden sich
auch das experimentelle Redcat Theater und eine Galerie, die nun zusammen
mit Café, Restaurant und Music-Shop die Kulturmeile der Grand Avenue
weiter beleben dürften.
November 23, 2003
The Dodgers Weren't Enough: Now They Have Disney Hall
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Movie stars, civic leaders and cultural administrators turned out in
droves last month for the inaugural galas at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the
spectacular new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Among them was Zarin
Mehta, the executive director of the New York Philharmonic, and it was
hard not to feel a little sorry for him as he circulated through the
elegant lobbies. Yes, the feisty Mr. Mehta has a penchant for exasperating
critics, board members and artists' managers. And during the New York
Philharmonic's leak-prone, ill-fated merger talks with Carnegie Hall in
recent months, Mr. Mehta proved an unyielding and contentious negotiator.
But he and the orchestra, long frustrated with Avery Fisher Hall, must be
envious of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's success in having rallied
support against great economic and bureaucratic odds to build an
architecturally enchanting and acoustically vibrant 21st-century facility.
Disney Hall is not just an inviting auditorium; it's a tangible sign of
the city's belief in the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its charismatic
music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, a 45-year-old Finnish conductor and
composer. Los Angeles — the home of Hollywood, mission control for all
trends in popular culture and La-La Land to intellectually snobbish East
Coasters — is counting on a symphony orchestra to bring new vitality to
the downtown area. In contrast, the tradition-bound New York Philharmonic
— after its years of public squabbling with Lincoln Center, its whiny
complaints about Avery Fisher Hall and the embarrassing collapse of its
ill-conceived merger plan — has opened itself to charges of being
self-absorbed and hopelessly staid.
As if to drive the point home, the Berlin Philharmonic conquered New York
this month with three bracing programs at Carnegie Hall, conducted by its
dynamic music director, Simon Rattle, now in his second season. Few
orchestras have a more storied heritage. Yet in hiring Sir Simon, who
seems younger than his 48 years, the Berlin Philharmonic showed the
courage to change. On taking the post, Sir Simon announced his intention
to bring the orchestra into the 21st century, bolster its commitment to
contemporary music and forge ties with living composers. The Carnegie
programs juxtaposed old works and new: Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony and
György Ligeti's Violin Concerto; Schubert's great C major Symphony and
Heiner Goebbels's eclectic "Aus Einem Tagebuch" ("From a Diary"). There
were lots of young faces among the players; the orchestra's energetic
music-making leaped off the stage.
Back in Los Angeles, the achievements of the Philharmonic go far beyond
corralling the community into supporting the construction of a landmark
concert hall. Its moment has been long in coming — at least since 1984,
when Mr. Salonen, at 26, conducted the orchestra in his American debut. By
the time he was appointed music director, in 1992, the institution had
determined to make itself a cutting-edge orchestra with a new hall to
match. Though its former home, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, was too big
and acoustically indistinct, Mr. Salonen and his players made the best of
it. With his exciting programming — ambitious festivals of music by
Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Lutoslawski; subscription concerts that boldly
alternated Ligeti works with Haydn symphonies — Mr. Salonen was already
showing where he intended to take the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Under his
leadership, the orchestra became a lean, burnished and modern ensemble,
giving Angelenos a reason to rally behind the Disney Hall project.
The opening programs made good on the promise. Virtually a festival of
contemporary music, they included premieres by John Adams and John
Williams, whose "Soundings" opened a substantive and fascinating program
of film music. Not a single 19th-century work was played, though a brass
canzona by Gabrieli and a minisymphony by Mozart were presented to
demonstrate the subtleties of the hall's acoustics. And as the Los Angeles
Philharmonic was capturing international attention at Disney Hall, what
was the New York Philharmonic up to? A "Beethoven Experience": six
programs devoted to Beethoven's nine symphonies and five piano concertos
in 12 concerts, conducted by the orchestra's music director, Lorin Maazel.
The New York Philharmonic lays claim to Beethoven because it introduced
several of his symphonies to American audiences in the mid-19th century.
But didn't that franchise expire long ago? What orchestra wouldn't claim
closeness to Beethoven?
Mr. Maazel's immediate predecessor, Kurt Masur, presented a Beethoven
symphony cycle only five years ago. But Mr. Maazel clearly wanted to put
his interpretive stamp on the symphonies for Philharmonic audiences. New
York critics mostly avoided the series, as lacking in news value. The one
concert I attended was undistinguished: a technically adept but pro forma
reading of the ebullient Fourth Symphony, a hard-driven account of the
famous Fifth and a dismaying performance of the Third Piano Concerto. In
the concerto, the expressive liberties of Gianluca Cascioli, a young,
technically facile but indulgent Italian pianist, were completely at odds
with Mr. Maazel's micromanaging. Some music directors might fairly argue
that new audiences are more likely to be converted to classical music by
Beethoven than by Lutoslowski. But not when Beethoven is performed in such
an insistently monumental manner. I'd put my money on Mr. Rattle's
performance of the "Pastoral" Symphony — coming after works by Bartok and
Ligeti, which made the score seem audacious and fresh — to awaken interest
in Beethoven among first-time listeners.
To his credit, Mr. Maazel is presenting the American or Philharmonic
premieres of several works this season. The subscription series began with
a major new symphony by one of the finest composers around, Stephen Hartke,
a Los Angeles resident inexplicably ignored by Mr. Salonen. Yet for the
most part, programming under Mr. Maazel has been conventional, heavy on
blockbuster works of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It might, for
example, be interesting to hear the probing young pianist Lars Vogt play
Brahms's First Concerto in February, but not in a program with a potpourri
of preludes and overtures by Wagner. This is programming by default,
simply combining familiar works by late Romantic German giants.
Last month The New York Times published two volatile columns by Deborah
Solomon, a cultural critic, who dismissed Lincoln Center as an elitist
institution that has become irrelevant to young New Yorkers. As it relates
to the production arm of Lincoln Center, the charge is unfair. In just the
last year, the Great Performers and New Visions series and the Lincoln
Center Festival have presented an avant-garde opera by Salvatore Sciarrino,
a celebration of music by Mr. Adams, a Chinese opera, the Bang on a Can
All-Stars and much more. Jane S. Moss, the vice president for programming
at Lincoln Center, is as creative a concert presenter as any in the
business. Her efforts to make Lincoln Center a happening place are impeded
by the musty thinking of certain constituents, especially the New York
Philharmonic, which sees nothing wrong with the status quo and is tightly
bound to the subscription series format.
Actually, no major American orchestra, including the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, has shown the courage to break away from the subscription
series approach to programming, which serves as a drag on creativity.
Imagine weeks in which, instead of offering three or four performances of
a something-for-everyone program, an orchestra would present an integrated
series of individual programs that surveyed a past or living composer, a
historical period or a cultural issue. Marketing departments love the
subscription series, because it locks in audiences. But it may lock out
and turn off potential new audiences. The Los Angeles Philharmonic has
departed somewhat from the subscription mentality with its Stravinsky
festivals and other thematic programming. The orchestra also presents an
extensive series of enticing contemporary-music programs with a reduced
ensemble, the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group. And whatever the
format, Mr. Salonen manages to come up with interesting offerings. Los
Angeles music lovers, like their New York counterparts, will hear plenty
of Mozart, Berlioz and Mahler this season. But they will also hear the
Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu's "From Me Flows What You Call Time,"
with the Nexus Percussion Ensemble, butting up against Tchaikovsky's "Pathétique"
Symphony. And Mr. Salonen follows the Berlioz Requiem with a program of
new works by Magnus Lindberg, Liza Lim and himself.
The New York Philharmonic is trying something innovative next May, with
its Charles Ives celebration, but Mr. Maazel will conduct only one of the
six programs, the least adventurous. In general, whenever Mr. Maazel
presents something new or recent, it almost compels him to jazz up his
thinking. In June, for example, he will conduct the premiere of "Final
Nightshade" by the exuberantly inventive Danish composer Poul Ruders,
followed by Prokofiev's restless Violin Concerto No. 2 and Schumann's
ecstatic Second Symphony.
In Los Angeles, meanwhile, the full houses for the inaugural concerts were
to be expected, since the whole city was abuzz about Disney Hall, which
many architecture critics have called Frank Gehry's masterpiece. Perhaps
the interest will slacken with time, but I doubt it. The audience listened
with palpable intensity to Mr. Adams's incandescent "Dharma at Big Sur"
and to Yo-Yo Ma's impassioned playing in the fitful Cello Concerto by
Lutoslawski, which is like some adversarial confrontation between unhinged
cellist and orchestra. Mr. Salonen may have lost some mainstream
concertgoers over the years with his adventurous programming, but he seems
to have won over younger audiences who welcome new experiences.
Of course, Disney Hall enhances the act of listening. Though it seats
2,200, it seems much smaller. With sections of seats surrounding the stage
on all sides, the audience feels as if it were not just hearing a
performance but sitting in the midst of it. No amount of reconstruction
could turn Avery Fisher Hall into a place like Disney. Yet the New York
Philharmonic has long blamed the hall's inadequate acoustics for its
troubles, when the real problem is its own artistic timidity. Besides, the
place has better sound than it is given credit for. You can bet that no
one will be thinking about acoustics when Colin Davis brings the London
Symphony to Avery Fisher in January to conduct a concert performance of Britten's
stunning early opera Peter Grimes.
Mr. Masur, during his tenure as music director, often spoke of the
Philharmonic's profound obligation to the great musical masterworks. Yes,
the orchestra should introduce new composers as well, he said, but given
its prestige and location, the New York Philharmonic had a special
responsibility to maintain high standards in the standard repertory.
During most of Mr. Masur's tenure, his views were challenged by the
orchestra's executive director, Deborah Borda, who finally left in
frustration to take the same post at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It must
have been bittersweet for Mr. Mehta to see his predecessor doing
interviews with international media during the Disney Hall inaugural, as
she rightly boasted of the orchestra's leadership role in revitalizing
classical music for Los Angeles audiences.
Meanwhile, the leaders of the New York Philharmonic will have to swallow
their pride and come to terms both with Avery Fisher Hall and with their
Lincoln Center landlords, understandably angry after the orchestra's
near-defection. But artistic leadership remains the crucial question. Will
Mr. Maazel, whose contract ends in 2006, be reappointed, or will the
orchestra look to a new generation of conductors? This will matter much
more than any renovation project.
February 4, 2004
No Requiem for Classical CD's, Please
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
The British cultural critic Norman Lebrecht has been the Cassandra of classical music. His polemical 1997 book, "Who Killed Classical Music?: Maestros, Managers and Corporate Politics," offered insights into the way conglomerate thinking was ruining a once proudly nonprofit art form. But his bleak indictment was wildly overstated. Not content as Cassandra, Mr. Lebrecht is becoming a classical music sibyl as well. In a recent column in La Scena Musicale, an online magazine, Mr. Lebrecht offered what he called "the rock-solid prediction" that "the year 2004 will be the last for the classical record industry."
Should classical music lovers take this seriously? His analysis is
interesting, but his conclusion preposterous. That the recording industry
has been reeling from the one-two punch of poor economic conditions and
the proliferation of free Internet downloading is old news. Things have
never been worse, Mr. Lebrecht says. Major classical music labels, which a
decade ago "pumped out 120 new releases a year," he writes, now produce a
"trickle of two dozen." Where the majors "once fought bidding wars over
shimmering talent," he adds, "they now compete in shedding it."
He cites EMI Classics' decision not to extend the contract of Roberto
Alagna, the French-born Sicilian singer whom the company once touted as
"the fourth tenor." Mr. Alagna has been added to "the dump pile," Mr.
Lebrecht writes, "a victim of poor sales." (An EMI spokesman said that Mr.
Alagna was offered a new contract but rejected it, which amounts to being
dropped.) Mr. Alagna's wife, the soprano Angela Gheorghiu, "remains under
contract but has no further recordings planned," Mr. Lebrecht writes. Not
quite true, the EMI spokesman said. EMI is obligated to make several
Gheorghiu recordings, but the programs have not been specified.
Yet Mr. Lebrecht's evidence for the coming demise of classical
recording could be viewed alternatively as proof that for once the free
market is working. If some greedy major labels are getting the comeuppance
they deserve, let them go under.
Smaller labels like Nonesuch and Naxos, which once just filled in the gaps
with records of specialty repertory and adventurous artists ignored by the
majors, are proving that it is possible to release important recordings at
midrange prices and still pay the bills. And though the financial
repercussions from the downloading of CD's have the recording industry
feeling besieged and impotent, some bold orchestras have, like many rock
groups, taken matters into their own hands and released self-produced
CD's, recorded live and available on the Internet.
Considering Mr. Alagna's history at EMI, you can only say, "What did they
expect?" When EMI signed Mr. Alagna in 1993, he seemed a charismatic lyric
tenor with a refined understanding of French style and a dashing stage
presence. As he began dating Ms. Gheorghiu, an alluring, dusky-toned,
fiery Romanian soprano, her recording company, Decca, tried to lure Mr.
Alagna. EMI fought back and won. In 1998 EMI held a lavish news conference
and buffet at Tavern on the Green in Central Park to anoint opera's
handsome new love couple.
But their individual talents, though considerable, were oversold. The
classical market was glutted with an extensive back catalog. It was one
thing for EMI to offer its new stars in a welcome recording of Puccini's
lesser-known and lovely "La Rondine," stylishly conducted by Antonio
Pappano. But the couple's recording of Puccini's "Tosca"? Did EMI expect
opera buffs to buy this unremarkable "Tosca" when so many classic accounts
were available?
If not meeting Mr. Alagna's demands means that EMI can direct more
attention to composers and emerging artists, so much the better. One is
Leif Ove Andsnes, the young Norwegian pianist, an exclusive EMI artist and
for me the most accomplished pianist of the new generation.
Still, Mr. Lebrecht predicts that Mr. Andsnes will be held to "one disc a
year, just the one, if he's lucky." But might not this restriction
actually benefit Mr. Andsnes's development? So far he has put careful
thought into each of his albums, like his scintillating 2003 Schubert
recording, which interestingly offers the Piano Sonata in D major, D. 850,
along with a group of mostly lesser-known lieder sung by the British tenor
Ian Bostridge.
Every day comes more evidence that the classical music business is
facing dismaying economic challenges. Last month the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra announced that, to deal with a budget crisis, its musicians and
staff members had agreed to a three-week unpaid furlough. The recording
industry has been further shaken by seismic shifts in digital technology.
In the glory decades artists like Arthur Rubinstein and George Szell made
big money from their recordings. Today, with the exceptions of a handful
of stars, most artists understand that recordings will not make them a
living. It is hard to speak of classical and pop recordings as the same
industry. A violin recital album that sold 5,000 to 10,000 copies over
three to five years would be considered a solid success. Sales of 50,000
would be considered extraordinary. By contrast EMI paid $28 million just
to buy out Mariah Carey's contract in 2002.
Though the soprano Renée Fleming is a top-selling Decca artist, the Sony
Classical label has just released a lovely account of her performance in
the title role of Massenet's "Manon," recorded live at the National Opera
of Paris with the tenor Marcelo Alvarez, a Sony artist, singing Des Grieux.
In the golden days an artist of Ms. Fleming's popularity would have been
rushed into the studio to document her major opera roles. Studio
recordings of a complete opera have become dauntingly expensive. Live
recordings are a viable alternative.
In recent years two major orchestras, exasperated by the declining
interest of the major labels, have boldly taken live recording one step
further and started producing their own CD's. The London Symphony is one.
Its live 2001 recording of Berlioz's epic opera "Les Troyens" was issued
on the orchestra's label, LSO Live. The San Francisco Symphony has also
established its own label, SFS Media, and issued, among other releases, a
blazing account of Mahler's Sixth Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson
Thomas. Both recordings received critical acclaim, solid sales and Grammy
Awards. Though the CD's are in stores, consumers can also order them from
the orchestras' Web sites.
The growth of downloading technology has received lots of media coverage.
But not enough attention has been directed to this more benign Internet
prospect: instead of manufacturing thousands of discs and getting them
into stores, the record companies will increasingly take orders online,
burn copies of the requested CD's and mail them.
This mode of operating has already salvaged Composers Recordings Inc., the
scrappy nonprofit label that for 48 years maintained the most eclectic and
adventurous catalog of contemporary classical music. Though that company
folded in April, its catalog was taken over by another nonprofit, New
World Records, which has promised to make the entire catalog available by
burning to order, complete with printouts of the liner notes.
Here is my rock-solid prediction, though it comes with no deadline: the
major labels will set up their own custom-made CD ventures. The move makes
financial sense and will allow companies to keep their entire back
catalogs in circulation, including oddball specialty items.
Still, consumers will have to adjust to new realities. Custom-burned CD's
are not likely to come with fancy packaging. Serious collectors who are
running out of shelf space at home have begun jettisoning the hard plastic
jewel boxes, slip their CD's into soft plastic envelops and store them in
file boxes. After all, a CD is essentially a plastic-coated floppy disk.
Maybe we will have to start treating them that way.
Despite the greed and bungling of so many recording executives, these
companies still have top-level employees who care about classical music
and want to deliver it to appreciative consumers.
If the classical divisions of the major labels totter, as Mr. Lebrecht
predicts, so be it. Smaller companies and emerging technologies will offer
new solutions. Seems naïve? Well, classical music could use a few
Pollyannas right now. It already has a Cassandra.
May 14, 2003
As Funds Disappear, So Do Orchestras
By STEPHEN KINZER
After the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra finished playing Wagner and Tchaikovsky to an audience of 1,300 in Boca Raton on Friday, the orchestra's executive director, Trey Devey, took to the stage to announce that this might be its last concert. "If you have the potential to help us and be a hero, then call us," Mr. Devey pleaded. "We need a hero." No one called, at least no one with the necessary resources. Later Mr. Devey issued a statement saying the orchestra was "temporarily suspending operations and terminating the employment of musicians."
The apparent collapse of the Florida Philharmonic, the only major
orchestra in South Florida, is the latest in a series of tremors that have
shaken the symphonic world this season. Nearly a dozen orchestras across the
country have either closed or are in danger of doing so. This season's first
orchestral casualty was the San Jose Symphony, which shut down in November.
The Tulsa Philharmonic, the Colorado Springs Symphony and the
San Antonio Symphony followed. In February the 49-year-old
Savannah Symphony Orchestra canceled the rest of its season. It was $1.3
million in debt, had gone through five executive directors in seven years
and was unable to meet its payroll.
The musicians of the Houston Symphony went on strike for three weeks
in March and April and in the end were forced to settle for a contract that
imposed sharp curbs on wages and benefits. Their counterparts at the
Baltimore Symphony accepted a similarly harsh contract after what their
union leader called "difficult and painful consideration." The Pittsburgh
Symphony, one of the country's major ensembles, is facing a $2 million
deficit, and its board has proposed selling its concert hall. It will also
begin what are likely to be difficult labor negotiations this summer.
Earlier this month dozens of musicians from the 66-year-old Louisville
Orchestra appeared in formal attire at the city's unemployment office to
file for benefits. They had not been paid for three weeks, and their
orchestra faces an $800,000 deficit.
Several orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, have
recently issued emergency appeals to donors. Although the Philharmonic is in
no danger of collapse, some others say they may not reopen next season if
their appeals are not successful. Orchestra administrators blame their woes
on the weak economy, but critics say many of them have failed to adapt to
changing times. Ed Wulfe, a Houston real estate developer who helped mediate
the dispute in his city, said "a combination of lethargy and `that's the way
it's always been done' thinking" had shaped the culture of the Houston
Symphony "and probably a lot of orchestras across the country." "This is a
competitive world, and we've got to find ways to tell the story better, to
get out into the community, to reach out to new audiences," Mr. Wulfe said.
"It takes people with some imagination."
The plight of the Houston Symphony reflects the challenges that orchestras
are confronting across the country. Houston, the nation's fourth-largest
city, has had a full-size symphony orchestra since 1972. Mr. Wulfe said the
orchestra was vital. "We realize that to attract business, to attract
broad-minded, innovative, creative people, we have to offer more than just a
job," he said. Critics of orchestra management are not so sure. They suggest
that if a city cannot come up with the money to support a symphony orchestra,
perhaps it does not need one. Some cultural figures say it is hard to sell
classical music in places where much of the population has no direct
connection to the northern European cultures that produced most of it.
Others lament that many universities today emphasize career training over
the humanities, allowing students to reach adulthood without any exposure to
fine arts. Still others share Mr. Wulfe's view that orchestra administrators
are too slow moving and unimaginative.
"I don't think there's a deep systemic problem that's unique to symphony
orchestras, since airlines and hotel chains and hockey teams are also
suffering from this economic downturn," said Henry Fogel, who is about to
leave the top administrative post at the Chicago Symphony to become
president of the American Symphony Orchestra League. "During the great
economy of the 1990's orchestras perhaps expanded faster than they should
have. I believe that in really good economic times orchestras should not
spend up to their revenues and should instead go for a surplus and keep a
cushion for the future. I wish I'd believed that 10 or 15 years ago." Mr.
Fogel said some orchestras were run by insular groups that did not inspire
donor confidence. "Are there enough people in a city who want an orchestra
and are willing to support it?" he asked. "That becomes a difficult and
tricky question when you ask whether an administration or board has done all
that can be done in garnering that support, or if it has not done enough."
Those questions have been raised repeatedly in Houston. Ann Kennedy, who was
hired in 2001 as the Houston Symphony's executive director, had never before
run an arts organization, and some active in the city's cultural life said
she had not managed to energize either the orchestra or donors. Her board is
also considered weaker than those guiding the Museum of Fine Arts and other
more successful Houston arts institutions. "Somehow this board didn't become
the board to go on in Houston, and that's very difficult to fix," said an
arts administrator who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he deals
regularly with the Houston Symphony. "When you have the wrong mix, the
people of real power don't become interested in joining. It's going to take
somebody of importance in the community stepping forward and taking
responsibility for reshaping the board, and the board allowing itself to be
reshaped."
The musicians' strike in Houston ended with the signing of a contract
that calls for the cancellation of 10 concerts in the season, cuts in staff
size and salaries, higher health care premiums and mandatory unpaid
furloughs for musicians. Partly because of tensions stemming from the labor
dispute, nearly a dozen musicians have left the orchestra in recent months,
either permanently or temporarily. A union survey suggested that 80 percent
would leave if they had a good offer elsewhere. "The mood has changed," said
Houston's music director, Hans Graf.
This season has forced many orchestra administrators to recognize the need
for a new approach, but they are uncertain what it should be. "There has to
be a sea change in the way these organizations are run," said Jeffrey B.
Early, a banker who is completing a two-year term as president of the
Houston Symphony's board. "We have to find ways of putting more people in
the seats." Mr. Early said he hoped the Houston orchestra's new associate
conductor, Carlos Miguel Prieto, who was formerly music director of the
Xalapa Symphony Orchestra and associate conductor of the Mexico City
Philharmonic, would find ways to attract more Hispanic patrons. "And we've
got Beethoven's `Ode to Joy' coming up," he added. "We ought to be able to
fill the hall with that."
June 29, 2003
How to Kill Orchestras
By BERNARD HOLLAND
As American orchestras lick their wounds, or die of them, the blame falls on fleeing contributors, bad management and disappearing audiences. Maybe these are symptoms, not causes.Real causes? Take the model on which American orchestras are built. It no longer works. It survives in a few big cities, but even musical fortresses like the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Chicago Symphony are, by all reports, leaking blood by the quart.
American orchestras began with a place, not a culture.
Simplified, the story goes like this: With westward expansion, cities were new
and their roots shallow. Certain things were needed to keep them from blowing
away with the wind. For stability, the American city needed street lighting,
sewers, schools, parks, libraries and — oh, yes — a symphony orchestra.
The free-enterprise system, which worked so admirably to bring the American city
its new wealth, transferred poorly to the performing arts. Local tycoons found
that the pay-as-you-go ethic that had made their own fortunes fitted not at all.
But they had been to New York and Boston, and to Europe. "These places have
Beethoven symphonies," they said, "and so should we." When the American
orchestra presented its unpaid bills at the end of a season, the wealthy few
wrote personal checks.
But then the wealthy few became too many. They had children, and the children
had children. Family wealth spread sideways; descendants multiplied and left for
other American cities. They took their diminishing share of the family riches
with them. Family foundations were established, and though arts-friendly at
first, they became more interested in AIDS research and social reform.
With the great mansion on the hill no longer a reliable source of fiscal
salvation, local corporations helped with the burden. If U.S. Steel was to keep
its Pittsburgh executives happy, and if it was to attract new ones from
elsewhere, it needed a city with first-rate universities, the Steelers and the
Pirates and — oh, yes — a symphony orchestra.
This remained good business until the coming of the worldwide
conglomerate: a handful of international operatives buying up the many companies
that had made their own American cities thrive. Boardrooms in London and Geneva
could hardly be expected to burn with civic pride for the Midwestern city
halfway across America. Local, state and federal governments offered a little,
but not much. American officialdom has always been uneasy with any enterprise
that cannot take care of itself. Now everyone is so strapped financially that
giving more, or even as much as usual, becomes moot.
With good management, it is supposed, money and listeners will come rolling in —
again, a symptom masquerading as a cause. Orchestras are not sick because they
have bad management. They have bad management because they are sick. Failing
industries do not attract top employees.
One wan and revealing little culprit here is the invention of the
arts-administration degree, fostering a younger generation that can administer
but doesn't know what it is administering. The incidence of musical illiteracy
in symphony offices, staffed with music lovers and record collectors, is high.
Symphony boards tend toward successful businesspeople admirably devoted to
keeping orchestras fiscally afloat but who, with little knowledge of music or
real interest in it, have no capacity to fix a purpose or a path.
As for disappearing audiences, no amount of managing will solve that one.
Classical music has only itself to blame. It has indulged the creation of a
narcissistic avant-garde speaking in languages that repel the average committed
listener in even our most sophisticated American cities. Intelligent,
music-loving and eager to learn, such listeners largely understand that true
talent and originality must find their own voice. What they do not understand is
why the commitment to reach and touch listeners in the seats does not stand at
the beginning of the creative process, as it did with Haydn and Mozart. This
kind of art-for-art's-sake has much to answer for.
Once upon a time, a regenerative process was in motion: the
mysterious new piece of music that was gradually transformed into the next old
masterpiece. It still happens, but as an exception, not the rule. A recent
performance of Schoenberg's Five Pieces on the West Coast was preceded by an
explanatory lecture from the podium that was longer than the music itself. The
Five Pieces are almost 100 years old.
The failure of cross-pollinating programs (old favorites standing next to new
music) is painfully obvious in the way programs are arranged. Schedule Brahms
before intermission and Birtwistle after, and you will watch one-third to
one-half of your audience vanish prematurely into the night. Program forgotten
masterpieces 200 years old, and still, avoidance mechanisms kick in. "New" has
come to equal "suspect" among wary patrons.
It is nice to celebrate the hip, fresh faces who come to hear Stefan Wolpe at
the Miller Theater or Bang on a Can composers at Symphony Space. These are not,
on the other hand, faces you are likely to find listening to Rimsky-Korsakov in
the symphony halls of American cities. Audiences have fragmented. Lovers of the
new have their own worlds now. Rejecting the new, symphony managements and the
patrons who keep them in business have fallen back on the tried and true,
repeated endlessly.
So have American opera houses. One is happy watching as they attract new
listeners for old favorites. But our blind faith in immortal masterpieces is
just that: blind. La Bohème is not a renewable resource. Use it too
often, and it wears out. The Bohème audience, furthermore, likes neither
nor any Son of Lulu. So what are opera companies to do other than idle in
neutral? The wave of new pieces sweeping American houses, staggering in their
mediocrity, live and die like fireflies.
I wish I could interest the Environmental Protection Agency in
looking into the symphony managers and conductors — almost all of them — who
have so mercilessly exploited the mighty Beethoven Fifth and Ninth
Symphonies, reducing them to pop-culture clichés and deadening their amazing
qualities to the public ear. The record business is failing in the same way.
After 50 recordings of Brahms's Fourth Symphony, Nos. 51 and 52 become
irrelevant.
Fleeing audiences are one more symptom, the cause being a public art that has
been abandoned by its avant-garde and uses up its given natural resources with
profligacy. Audiences are not to blame. They are smarter than Elliott Carter
and Milton Babbitt want to think they are.
American orchestras will keep failing. I feel less for them than for the
excellent musicians who will be displaced. But face a few facts. American
orchestras will no more grow than Mother Nature will take the liver spots off my
hands. We have grown old together. Darwinism is at work,
and American orchestras must adjust: to smaller dreams, fewer orchestras serving
wider areas, fragmented listenerships, hopes for some kind of government help
and, above all, a way of preserving the past, electronically if not by word of
mouth.