Czechs crack on with new concert hall
OrchestrasThey broke ground today on the new concert hall in Ostrava.
The eastern town, where Leos Janacek died, has a Philharmonic orchestra and a May festival named after him.
‘A faraway country of which we know little,’ as an unlamented British PM once said.
The architect is the New Yorker, Steve Holl.
What an irony, a New York architect working on a concert hall of central European city with a population of $280,000. William Osborne can explain better than anybody. In this case, he is right, I think.
Population size is usually not measured in US dollars.
The design is a cool example of the style of ‘monstrositism’, like the Kunsthaus in Graz:
https://www.istockphoto.com/nl/foto/kunsthaus-graz-austria-gm458643409-16956635
Close.
The quote is “…a quarrel in a faraway land between people of which we know nothing.”
Who said it?
Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister, 1938, over the threatened German occupation of Czechoslovakia (the year before the start of World War II.
Janacek Philharmonic in Ostrava, NOSPR in Katowice, Cavatina Hall in Bielsko-Biała (1000 seats and more), and then some really cool smaller halls (400-500 seats) in Jastrzębie-Zdrój and Pszczyna… Four of those cities put their bidding for European Capital of Culture 2029 title. Two are in the final round (Katowice and Bielsko-Biała). All within a 50 km radius. Has this little corner of Europe got something that even London could be a little bit envious about?
https://www.whitemad.pl/sala-koncertowa-w-jastrzebiu-zdroju-jedna-z-ladniejszych-w-polsce/
Hideous.
Looks like an Art Deco toaster.
I was hoping it would be shaped like a dumpling…
I wonder when they started planning and when it will be done. The hall planned for Prague (currently called the Vltavske Filharmonie) isn’t planned to open until 2032.
https://www.koncertnisal.cz/en/the-project#schedule-75
There are also two other relatively new concert halls in Poland, namely the superb Narodowe Forum Muzyki (NFM) hall in Wrocław (formerly Breslau) which opened in 2015 and the striking ice towers Filharmonia Hall in the far northern Baltic city of Szczecin (aka Stettin) which was inaugurated in 2014.
Apart from the exceptional architecture common to both halls, the outstanding acoustics were designed by Barcelona- based Dr. Higini Arau in Szczecin and Russell Johnson protégé and ARUP Technical Services director Tateo Nakajima in Wrocław.
Nakajima is also the designated acoustical engineer for the new concert hall in Belgrade. The architect for that project is London-based Amanda Levete of AL_A.
Such multi-national collaboration and cooperation is surely what makes the European Union such a haven for borderless creativity and true cultural diversity.
Despite the success of AL_A in winning the Belgrade Concert Hall competition, the UK is still hampered by the consequences of Brexit, and not just in the artistic and performing arts sectors.
Sir Keir Starmer should use his whopping parliamentary majority to revisit the Brexit decision, which was more the result of wilful misrepresentation, drum-banging jingoism and downright lies pedalled by Messrs Farage, Johnson, Gove et.al than any rational or objectively informed considerations.
I absolutely agree. Poland is blessed with many new concert halls now: Koszalin, Lublin, Białystok, Zielona Góra, Opole, Łódź. Even music schools and academies have some great ones: Poznań, Katowice, Gdańsk, Warsaw (New Miodowa), Bydgoszcz (about to be finished). On the other hand – London was planning to build London Centre for Music for LSO and Simon Rattle. It all ended, sadly, after Brexit. Rattle took on German citizenship, left the LSO and the plans for the LCM were scrapped. Brexit has been nothing but a disaster for British music, it seems.