Geffen Hall Stumbles, Cincinnati Shows the Way

[lennygoran]

We've been talking about Geffen Hall-Cooper's NYTimes suggests this. Regards, Len


As Geffen Hall’s Renovation Stumbles, Cincinnati Shows the Way

By MICHAEL COOPER OCT. 17, 2017


CINCINNATI — A concert hall that was simply too cavernous: hard to sell out and leaving audiences feeling distant from the music. Lobbies that have grown shabby over time. A fortresslike presence, somewhat isolated from the city just outside its doors.

These are all problems that Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic have been trying to fix for nearly two decades at the theater now known as David Geffen Hall — and still hope to, after their announcement earlier this month that they had scrapped a $500 million gut renovation in favor of a more modest approach.

But Cincinnati faced these issues, too — and went ahead and did something about them. Just as the latest Geffen Hall plans were being sent back to the drawing board, this city’s stately 1878 redbrick Music Hall was reopening to cheers after a $143 million, 16-month renovation that restored its High Victorian Gothic grandeur, uncovered bricked-over windows to open its facade to the surrounding neighborhood and shrank its giant auditorium by removing a thousand seats.

As he welcomed the cheering audience back at the reopening concert on Oct. 6, Louis Langrée, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s music director, said the new hall would bring them “closer to the music.”


“It used to be so long and narrow and cold,” Walter E. Langsam, 82, an architectural historian and longtime patron, said during intermission. “It embraces you now in a way it never did.”


A visit to the renewed Music Hall suggested that it could be a road map of sorts for officials in New York.
Shrinking Down

In modern concert halls, as in modern baseball stadiums, smaller is generally considered better. Orchestra officials here said that while there had been more sellouts in recent seasons, especially of Cincinnati Pops concerts, they were the exception, not the rule. Just as ball teams no longer build stadiums for World Series crowds, most orchestras no longer build halls that only visiting superstars can hope to pack.

Audiences raised on high fidelity and high definition demand more intimate experiences.

“I think our ears are different,” the new president of the New York Philharmonic, Deborah Borda, said of the trend toward smaller halls in recent decades. “We are now used to having a sound system and cranking up the sound, or putting buds in our ears.”

Before its renovation, Cincinnati Music Hall was, in the pejorative words of some musicians, a bit of a barn. The multiuse hall, which was the site of the 1880 Democratic National Convention, held 3,417 seats — many tucked under balconies. Now the side and rear walls on its lower levels have been moved in. When the orchestra plays on a stage that now extends past the proscenium and into the auditorium, the hall holds just 2,282. (It can seat up to 2,524 when other resident companies, including the Cincinnati Opera, the Cincinnati Ballet and the Cincinnati May Festival, perform.)

“It gives you a little more latitude to program things that you know are going to be challenging to some, but which are part of your mission,” said Jonathan Martin, the orchestra’s new president, who noted that popular pieces like “Carmina Burana” would always outsell Bruckner symphonies. “But we should be doing Bruckner, because that’s part of our mission.”

When the New York Philharmonic first planned to leave Carnegie Hall for Lincoln Center in the 1950s, it envisioned a hall with 2,400 seats. But it built one with more than 2,700 amid a post-World War II classical boom. Now, Ms. Borda said, there is a “real possibility” that a redone Geffen Hall will lose seats “to enhance the acoustical experience and to make it a better emotional experience at concerts.”
Creature Comforts

With fewer seats, Music Hall can now fit more comfortable ones — a bit wider, with added legroom. And in a nod to the desires of modern audiences, cup holders allow concertgoers to bring drinks into the auditorium with them, as Broadway audiences often do these days. (At one point on reopening night, the clinking of ice cubes could be heard during a quiet passage of Scriabin’s “Poem of Ecstasy.”)


The restrooms were upgraded, increasing capacity by about 60 percent. The hall also added more concession stands.
Surviving Exile

One reason New York scaled back its plans for a radical transformation of Geffen Hall was the growing fear that building the most recent, complicated design threatened to leave the Philharmonic homeless for more than two seasons. That was considered a real risk to the orchestra, which can ill afford to hasten the loss of its subscriber base.

Here in Cincinnati, the orchestra carefully planned for its single season away from home, taking over a theater in downtown Cincinnati and spending $3 million to bring it up to snuff. It scheduled more visiting stars than usual and offered free parking to subscribers to try to keep them in the fold. During its season in exile, an orchestra official said, its subscriptions only dipped by 4.6 percent.


Another fear in New York was the rising price tag — and questions about how much money the city could be expected to provide. Cincinnati scaled back some of its earlier ambitions, too, in order to bring costs down, but in the end accomplished its wish list with $143 million. Grants from the city of Cincinnati and the state of Ohio, along with state and federal tax credits, provided roughly half the budget.
Easy on the Ears

A big difference between the renovation here and the one in New York is that Music Hall has long been celebrated for its acoustics, while Geffen Hall has been considered acoustically troubled.

For its reopening, Cincinnati’s hall got an acoustical workout, from the ebullience of John Adams’s “Short Ride in a Fast Machine” to the Classicism of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 to the blaze of Scriabin. In Jonathan Bailey Holland’s atmospheric new piece “Stories of Home,” whispered murmurs of the woodwind and brass players, speaking in English and German, came through clearly. Janelle Gelfand, a veteran Cincinnati critic, judged the new acoustics “a work in progress” in a review in Classical Voice North America, praising some aspects but criticizing others.

In an interview backstage, Mr. Langrée praised the new hall as “very honest,” and called its stage a vast improvement that allowed the musicians to hear one another better. “The sound was less clear before,” he added. “It was mostly working on balance, dynamics. Now it’s about colors.”

Mr. Langrée, of course, is also the music director of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, which plays each summer in Geffen Hall. When he was asked if the Cincinnati renovation might show the way forward for his New York base, he laughed.

“Oh, yes, I think so,” he said, before stopping himself. “But I cannot give any advice.”



https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/arts ... front&_r=0

[John F]

Cincinnati has had it easy. The Symphony Orchestra simply moved to the 2,500-seat Taft Theatre, which has no resident institution and has been used only for special events. The Cincinnati Opera, such as it is - 16 performances of 4 operas during the summer - moved to the 2,700-seat Aranoff Center, likewise used for miscellaneous special events.

If New York had a couple of auditoriums that size with that kind of scheduling flexibility, the Philharmonic would have a suitable venue for however long the Geffen Hall renovation might take, and they could get on with it. But that's precisely the problem. Carnegie Hall is fully booked and can't squeeze in 3-4 Philharmonic concerts a week; they explored that approach years ago and rejected it. The Brooklyn Academy of Music is, well, in Brooklyn.

I didn't know that Louis Langrée the music director of the Cincinnati Symphony and has been for a few years. Haven't been keeping up with who's where as I used to.

[maestrob]

Louis Langree is a fine conductor of Mozart and French music, lively and sparkling. I, too, did not know that he's now leading Cincinnati, and am delighted to hear it. He has recorded (besides Mozart) Chausson, Berlioz & Franck, all in very fine readings.

[jbuck919]

It may be hard to sell out now, but it was not always that way. It is one of the largest of auditoriums. Incidentally, does anyone know what the second-largest auditorium on the East Coast is after Radio City Music Hall? Well, don't bother yourself. It is Eisenhower Hall at West Point. When I first posted that years ago, even Ralph Stein, who was almost never wrong, did not believe me, and I had to post the figures to prove it.

[lennygoran]

It is Eisenhower Hall at West Point. When I first posted that years ago, even Ralph Stein, who was almost never wrong, did not believe me, and I had to post the figures to prove it.

How interesting-we'll probably be around there next Monday-we're going to Storm King if the weather holds up-want to see art and also fall foliage--too bad they're not predicting a good fall foliage for this year. Regards, Len

[jbuck919]

It is Eisenhower Hall at West Point. When I first posted that years ago, even Ralph Stein, who was almost never wrong, did not believe me, and I had to post the figures to prove it.

How interesting-we'll probably be around there next Monday-we're going to Storm King if the weather holds up-want to see art and also fall foliage--too bad they're not predicting a good fall foliage for this year. Regards, Len

You are breaking my heart. I haven't been back to Cornwall, the town where I grew up, in years, not since my father moved to Florida. (For those who don't know, Storm King is the name of the mountain between Cornwall and West Point, and it is also the name of a famous modern art museum in Cornwall.) I don't have to work on Monday. I'm half tempted to make the 2.5 hour drive from here to join you. I could show you how to navigate Route 218.

[lennygoran]

You are breaking my heart. I haven't been back to Cornwall, the town where I grew up, in years, not since my father moved to Florida. (For those who don't know, Storm King is the name of the mountain between Cornwall and West Point, and it is also the name of a famous modern art museum in Cornwall.) I don't have to work on Monday. I'm half tempted to make the 2.5 hour drive from here to join you. I could show you how to navigate Route 218.

John we'd love to meet you at Storm King-I've driven rte 218 and of course 9W-see photos below. This is part of a 3 day outing-NYC for 2 nights where we'll see an opera from NYCO and then making it up to Storm King Mon-we'll stay overnight in Fishkill--do hope rain would ruin our plans. Regards, Len

The opera in NYC is
NEW CHAMBER ADAPTATION
NEW YORK PREMIERE
DOLORES CLAIBORNE
BY TOBIAS PICKER
59E59 Theaters
October 22, 24, 26, 28 and 29, 2017
Hailed at its premiere by Opera News as "a significant new work...a triumph for all concerned," the impact of Stephen King's psychodrama is heightened in this intimate, new adaptation of Tobias Picker's opera. New York City Opera Principal Conductor Pacien Mazzagatti leads the production directed by Michael Capasso.