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The Radio 3 Boards > The Music Boards > The Concert Hall > How do you decide where to sit?
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Author Topic: How do you decide where to sit?  (Read 556 times)
martle
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« Reply #15 on: 19:13:58, 22-01-2008 »
Anyhow, back to where to sit rather than whether to break into a sweat. It's all a bit Londoncentric so far. What about Symphony Hall, Bridgewater, Scottish venues etc.?
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Green. Always green.
time_is_now
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« Reply #16 on: 19:18:39, 22-01-2008 »
Quote from: martle on 19:10:01, 22-01-2008
composers know how to bribe the cute steward...  Grin
Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked

Now I'm envious.

('Kylie' has a rather cute if silent boyfriend, by the way. Was she really called Kylie?Huh?)
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
Donna Elvira
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« Reply #17 on: 15:33:29, 07-02-2008 »
The Bridgewater Hall is generally very good for acoustics but I did once have a bad experience there when I was in the middle of the stalls for Mozart's 21st piano concerto - all I could hear was the trumpet!  (Not ideal, obviously . . .). 

Last time I went, I'd booked seats in the side circle without realising that we would need safety harnesses in order to feel secure.  One of the party had a terrible attack of vertigo (can't say I felt too comfy there myself) and I ended up having to beg for the seats to be changed; fortunately, the chap in the box office was fantastic and obliged unflinchingly.  The replacement seats were in the side stalls and the sound was fine.
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Lobby
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« Reply #18 on: 13:18:15, 14-02-2008 »
Royal Opera House: Front two row of the stalls, which are at least a bit cheaper than the rest of the stalls (I find being able to see how the singers interact with each other makes a real difference, even if there are some compromises to be made in terms of orchestral balance).   If we are seeing a production more than once, we normally try to get the front side seats in the stalls circle which others have mentioned.  We sometimes sit in the Amphitheatre, but they can be a tight squeeze and the lack of arm rests means you can be in uncomfortably close proximity to your neighbour.

ENO: we usually try to get an upper circle box as these are the same price as the other upper circle tickets, provide a good view and more comfortable seats, and you can take a few bottles of wine in with you Wink.  I'm afraid that, with the exception of the chairs in the boxes, I find all the seats at the Colisseum to be almost unbearably uncomfortable - I think its because the seats are set too low and therefore don't support my legs or back properly.

Barbican: left hand side of the stalls, about half way back as these provide a good compromise between decent sound, view and price.

Festival Hall: rear stalls, but not under the circle overhang.

Wigmore Hall, stalls, about half way back
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"I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever."
dave2010
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« Reply #19 on: 19:56:33, 29-02-2008 »
Sometimes with difficulty, and it's annoying when the on-line booking systems seem deliberately misleading. Everything looks sold out, so you choose a couple of relatively expensive seats, but when you get to the hall there are plenty available. The usual excuse is that the tickets are sold by different agents who don't communicate, but it does seem a scam.

Bad experiences - once booking through Last Minute to get "the best available seats ...." - they most certainly weren't, and since we happened to be passing the RFH we could have just gone in and booked better seats for the same or lower price, and avoided paying a booking fee. Arguing the toss about what were the best available is not easy, and the vendor had excuses, but given that there were plenty of seats available, it was pretty clear that it boiled down to personal opinion about whether the seats were good - which they weren't.

More recently, if you have any tendencies at all to claustrophobia avoid the rear stalls at Sadlers Wells - truly horrible seats. However the much cheaper seats in the Second Circle are very significantly better.
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Andy D
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« Reply #20 on: 21:43:12, 29-02-2008 »
Quote from: martle on 17:50:10, 22-01-2008
If you're attending a play, avoid the first two or three rows like the plague.



Exactly. I remember going to a production of Animal Farm at the Birmingham Rep a few years ago which was extremely messy ie the "animals" were splashing around in very real mud. Fortunately we'd booked seats well away from the stage.
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Andy D
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« Reply #21 on: 21:50:24, 29-02-2008 »
Quote from: martle on 19:13:58, 22-01-2008
Anyhow, back to where to sit rather than whether to break into a sweat. It's all a bit Londoncentric so far. What about Symphony Hall, Bridgewater, Scottish venues etc.?

In Symphony Hall I always like to sit near the back of the stalls. The side terraces are quite good as well but you sometimes get an odd acoustic effect where the sound travels all the way round the terrace and appears from the other side as an echo. Failing that I'd prefer to go in the Grand Tier ie right up the top, the 2 circles are pretty poor acoustically IMO.
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owain
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« Reply #22 on: 23:15:59, 29-02-2008 »
Quote from: Ruth Elleson on 17:37:36, 22-01-2008
Quote from: strinasacchi on 17:14:43, 22-01-2008
I always wonder about seats behind the stage.  I've never sat in one.  It must be quite a different experience seeing a concert from that perspective, let alone hearing it.  Any thoughts on that?

It's great sometimes to be able to watch the conductor from the front.
Absolutely!  Seeing a graceful conductor dance his way through the 'big three' Stravinsky ballets in one night was quite something.  I also spotted one of the Radio 3 people dancing around inside the booth at the back of the hall, too.

When you get to know a hall well, you can sometimes know that some of the cheap seats are actually going to offer a good balance for a particular programme.
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