The Sinfonia Varsovia have been assured by the city that their new hall will open in 2022.
It will look something like this.
More pics here.
The Sinfonia is smaller than the Warsaw National Philharmonic, which has its own premises.
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Obviously it will be a very special place, especially if they have left handed violinists in the orchestra and a piano whose lid opens on the left side of the keyboard, as pictured in the document… (click on the “More picks” link.)
The main picture makes me feel seasick just by looking at it. Yet another architect from hell?
The picture looks like one of Zaha Hadid’s big spider designs, expressing utopian enthusiasm and avoiding any indication of classical music.
Like the Parisian Philharmonie looks like a crashed space ship.
What these designers don’t understand, is that a concert hall has to create an atmosphere, separate from daily, modern life, as to prepare the mind and the heart for an experience of interiority and dignity, an ‘aspirational space’ in accordance with what happens in it. Nobody visiting a live classical music concert contemplates taking-off to Mars or Jupiter. You can only play Xenakis or Boulez in such spaces without embarrassment.
It’s a very spectacular architectual concept and I like it very much, but don’t expect this to be a great concert hall in terms of acoustics. Maybe good to look at the musicians (however, who wants to see an orchestra from the back?) but bad to listen (listening to an orchestra from the backside is really disturbing). Classical music deserves a “shoebox” concert hall. Period. If architects ignore that, they have done something wrong no matter how creative their ideas may be.
True: the way the orchestra is organized – strings in front, then the woodwind and the brass + percussion at the back, sometimes together with the double basses – is meant to project the sound forward. The layers of sound the mix in the totality of the hall.