Germans build $17m rehearsal hall with 199 seats

Germans build $17m rehearsal hall with 199 seats

Orchestras

norman lebrecht

October 11, 2023

The Philharmonie of South Westphalia has inaugurated a newly built rehearsal hall with state of the art facilities.

The heart of the “House of Music” is the large rehearsal hall with 410 square meters of space. It is twelve meters high. It has space for 199 chairs for visitors. The special highlight is the acoustics: these can be changed with electrically extendable curtains. This makes it possible to recreate acoustic scenarios that prevail at the Philharmonic’s various guest venues.

There are also ten tuning rooms on three floors, which are individually tailored to the respective instruments. Here the musicians can “warm up”, so to speak, before the entire orchestra rehearses together.

In order to avoid vibrations from one voice room being transmitted throughout the building, the rooms are designed as a “room within a room”. They are spring-loaded. All ventilations are designed so that no vibrations can be transmitted.

In order to offer the handcrafted instruments optimal conditions, three rooms with constant humidity regulation were created.

In other news, music director Nabil Shehata has been renewed until 2027.

Comments

  • Bob says:

    Actually 17 Million Euro, but in this day and climate a beacon of hope by any reckoning.

  • Ben says:

    “Voice room”? That’s why you shouldn’t rely on Google Translate when writing articles…

    • Stephan says:

      The verb ‘stimmen’ in German can mean ‘to tune’. ‘Die Stimme’ is the noun meaning ‘voice’ (plural = Stimmen meaning voices). Translators such as Google may not be able to decipher such subtle differences.

  • Mr. Ron says:

    The Germans know how to build.

  • Plush says:

    I salute them for building this sophisticated facility.

  • Dieter says:

    Some countries still invest and support culture! What a joy to read it. Imagine life without foot ball!

  • IC225 says:

    Always interesting to see UK trends catching on in Europe. These orchestral rehearsal halls that double as small concert venues – CBSO Centre, LSO St Luke’s, RLPO at The Friary, Halle St Peters, etc – are good investments and often highly useful.

  • Tom says:

    Sounds wonderful!
    To make this claim is understandable but it is, from my experience, probably not true.
    ‘ possible to recreate acoustic scenarios that prevail at the Philharmonic’s various guest venues.’

  • MOST READ TODAY: