Would you like to comment on any venues?  Favourably or otherwise...

I know I tried something similar some time ago, but I thought I'd try again.

My interest was peeked by a visit in October to Hamburg and in particular to the promotional site of the new Elbphilharmonie.  It's being constructed and should be open in 2011, I believe.



The artists impression looks fantastic, but I was a tad worried by the plans.  The green room area is massive and should easily support the main concert hall, the second smaller auditorium and the basement recital area.  But it is only connected to the main hall.  There is no performers area adjacent to either of the lesser halls.

This design feature just seemed a bit odd to me.  It could have some really good benefits, like getting performers to be with their audience just before going on, and maybe I have read the plans wrongly, but I did find it a bit odd.  Anyway it set me off thinking about what made a good venue, and then that set me off thinking that there would be lots of views, both from performer and audiant.

So, over to you.

Tommo

PS  This is the 100th thread I have started on this forum!

One is forced to concur as regards the surroundings of the hall indeed one notes a certain symmetry between the lack of regard given to the relationship between the 'lesser' (!) halls and the green room and the lack of regard given to the relationship between the edifice in general and its ambient surroundings.

How often is it that one is in a building of which one thinks this must have looked great on the plan but in the cold light of day it is indeed a building which gives anything but joy?

I quite like it as a building, but it doesn't look anything like a concert hall to me, more like an office block. Grafted onto a container ship.

(The Elbphilharmonie, that is, not the RAH.)

I don't like municipal flower beds, especially not when they are geraniums and fibrous begonias.  One of the aspects of Italian or French life that I so admire is their ability to produce perfectly impressive gardens with no silly flowers.



If this was good enough for Liszt, (Villa d'Este at Tivoli) it should be good enough for any other composer.

Well because it reminded us of the Antipodal "Opera House" (wherein incidentally ninety per centum of the repertoire presented is not opera at all but Northern American jazzy "comedies") - around that fundamentally Danish edifice too there is no flower sprig or bush, just concreted tracks along the wharfs, despite the natives' evident love of foliage when at home. As Mr. Thompson suggests that building too attracts little life and less love.

Of course, one could view such harbourside buildings as Bastions of the Arts jutting out into the barrenness of the sea except of course that Hamburg is not quite on the Baltic  

I quite like the outside of the RFH.  I've never liked the QEH.

I absolutely adore the Snape Maltings inside.  It's a wonderful place to play, and pretty good to sit in a listen to (although the seats need some improvement).  I like the surroundings, but I'm not sure about the price of the bar or oyster counter.

Reading's Hexagon deserves to be bulldozed.

Tommo

Hmmmmmm, yes.

Steeeeeeeeeep raking too.  It's almost as if some of the audience are above the orchestra.

But, nice curves. 

I'm quite amused by the range of different people walking arond the foyer, and the different attires.

Tommo

I'll second that. There IS no small-scale concert hall anywhere near here, not on the campus, not in Brighton or Hove. We've spent years making do with town halls, churches, acoustically rubbish theatres, clubs, places that are too big, too small...