前言：
本期的BBC MUSIC裡面有篇文章名為How to build a concert hall，吸引我的注意。
我相當熱愛--的確是可以用「熱愛」這個詞了--聽現場音樂會，也一直相當一廂情願地以為，世界上應該不會有人不愛聽現場音樂會吧？但後來才曉得，還真是有人寧願家中坐聽音響，也不願意踏進音樂廳來場現場音樂會。OK，就讓令人敬佩的器材狂人們家中坐吧，who cares?
因為個人的小小執念，讓我忍不住認為這篇文章有趣--或許對日後聽音樂會選位子不無小補吧？於是乎再來一回自以為是的讀者服務。若有打錯失誤，麻煩告知，我好改正一下，非常感激。
小小說明：1. 這篇文章是長了些，畢竟扯到歐洲主要幾個舊的以及即將完工的新音樂廳，但其實滿好讀的，不勉強，請自由取用多寡；2. 關於圖片，部分從wiki上面找來的，部分從建築網站；未完工的音樂廳如芬蘭的Musiikkitalo、漢堡的Elbe Philharmonie和波蘭的Sinfonia Varsovia，圖片則是示意圖；3. 文中有些建築師的想法，嗯，就是一付偉大建築師的樣子，所以....那就多欣賞一下建築師的口才吧。
以下正文：
What exactly does it take to create a world-class music venue? Nick Shave searches for eye-catching aesthetics and ideal acoustics as he explores some of today's most exciting new performance spaces.
On Helsinki's Mannerheim Street, opposite the House of Parliament, you'll see the Musiikkitalo-- a new building with chic glass facades, as clear as the waters of the nearby Toolonlahti Bay. When the music center opens in August, it will provide a new home for both the Helsinki Philharmonc Orchestra and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and a performance space for students at the Sibelius Academy. But what makes this new development to remarkable is that it is just a stone's throw from the orchestras' current home, the Finlandia Hall--a stunning building, modernist by design, which was completed only four decades ago. So why do they need a new venue? " The Finlandia Hall has never really been suitable for music," explains Musiikkitalo director, Helena Hiilivirta. 'It's beautifully designed, but its acoustics are not good."
(Finlandia Hall)
Finlandia Hall is the work of one of the names of 20th-century architecture, Finland's Alvar Aalto, who initially designed it with the aid of and acoustician, Paavo Arni. But when Arni died, Aalto saw no reason to replace him on the project, and completed his designs for the fan-shaped auditorium in which musicians now struggle to hear each other clearly on the stage. Ever since it was completed in 1971, its muffled accoustics have given the capital's concertgoers plenty to complain about. 'The stage is wrong and there are not the right reverberation times," explains Hiilivirta. 'The ceiling is too high, and walls too wide so the sound doesn't reflect back to the audience.'
But these kinds of problems are not just restricted to Aalto's designs, they plague the world's most iconic concert halls. Think of Sydney's Opera House, for example, whose acousical problem-- hign ceilings, cramped performing spaces, to name just two-- would run into hundreds of millions pounds to fix properly. Or London's Royal Albert Hall, with those giant fiberglass mushrooms that hang from the ceiling, solving the problem of its echo but not the way in which sound seems to ping around its cavernous spaces. Lest we forget, it took £91m over haul to improve the acoustics of London's Royal Festical Hall, whose side walls had been built too far apart. These are expensive improvements to make, which is the reason why today's architects are now focusing not just on the way our concert halls look, but more closely on the way they sound.
(Musiikkitalo)
In this respect, the Musiikkitalo offers value for money at €140. The center houses six small music halls--spaces for chamber recitals, jazz gigs, and electronic music-- as well as a central acoustic hall, designed to seat around 1700 spectators in terraces layered, like a vineyard, aroung the main stage. In order to create an ideal sound environment, its architects, LPR, have worked closely from the outset with world-renowned acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota. He created a scale mock-up of the hall, filled with replica dummies to which microphones are attached, so as to measure its reverberations. Hiilvirta explains: "When we launched the competition to see who would design the building, we said whoever won would have to work with Toyota--the accoustics came first."
(Vienna's Musikverein, Golden Hall)
Acoustical equipment to recreate an acoustic environment that in fact was discovered by chance centuries ago. The best concert hall acoustics in the world are to be found not within today's new buildings but, the experts will tell you, in Vienna's Musikverein. The first uses of its simple shoebox shape-- long, narrow with high ceilings-- dates back to the public rooms of Ancient Greece and Rome: the buildings were narrow so as to avoid the use of support columns to hold up the roofs, high to provide adequate ventilation, and extended lengthwise to accommodate larger numbers of people. But, as musicians and their audiences subsequently learned, this design has the tremendous acousical benefits too: when music is performed on the stage, the sound not only travels directly towards its listeners, but bounces off the side walls, creating that all-enveloping sense of warmth and intimacy that we have come to associate with, and now expect from, the traditional orchestral sound.
Christopher Jaffe describes the above in his book, The Acoustics of Performance Halls, which looks at the ways that architects and their acousticians emulated, altered and are now free to break away from the traditional shoebox design. The key, he says, is to recreate not the geometry, but the reflection patterns of traditional halls. This dicovery was only made in the 20th century, when the availability of new building materials-- and use of steel structures instead of weed-- offered architects the possibility of significantly altering geometry of their designs. Indeed, attempts to come up with a viable alternative to the basic shoebox seemed accoustically doomed until the early 1960's, when Hans Scharoun, in collaboration with acoustician Lotha Cremer, laid out plans for Berlin Philharmonie hall, which would set the template for the standard 'vineyard' concert hall design, in which the terraces, together with overhead reflector panels, reflect the sound for clarity and intimacy.
(Berlin Philharmonie)
(Berlin Philharmonie, main hall)
At a time when classical music is looking for ways to embrace greater levels of informality and attract a new generation of listeners, Scharoun's egalitarian layout takes on new resonance-- and not just in Helsinki. Perhaps its most imposing incarnation is to be found at the Elbe Philharmonie, Hamberg's iconic concert hall complex. Scheduled to open in 2013, it features a 2150-seat vineyard concert hall and 550-seat recital hall, providing a new residence for Christoph von Dohnanyi's NDR Sympnony Orchestra. Located on the site of a derelict cocoa-bean factory, it combines the dark-brick walls of the original warehouse with a spectacular glass-and-steel structure that rises high above the port, majestically mirroring the River Elbe below. Ascan Mergenthaler, senior partner at Herzog & De Meuron who designed the building, explains: 'The shoebox design goes completely against our idea of what a concert experience should be: going to a concert is not just about listening to the music but engaging socially, so we wanted a more democratic space that would allow this.'
(Hamburg's Elbe Philharmonie, in glass-and-steel)
(Elbe Philharmonie, main hall)
Hamburg's new hall is designed for maximum visual impact: visitors are invited to gaze up at its crystalline structures as they gradually ascend its long escalator to the main entrance. The costs of the development were initially estimated at €40m-- they are now in excess of €500m. 'But take any concert hall that's being built in the world and you'll probably find it's neither on budget nor on schedule because they are the most complicated buildings to create.' says Mergenthaler. Indeed, much of this huge additional expense and time( it's now two years overdue) has gone into getting the acoustics right, ensuring that its main concert hall is cocooned from the noise of the harbour and well insulated from the apartments and public spaces, including a hotel, above. 'We were forced to push this concert hall inside the envelope of the warehouse which means the whold vineyard resembles a vertical space,' says Mergenthaler. ' That decreases the distance between audience and music, making a much more concentrated, intimate experience than you have in other halls.'
(Warsaw's Sinfonia Varsonia concert hall)
Though vinyard and shoebox layouts provide the two main prototypes for today's conert hall designs, Austrian-based architect Thomas Pucher believes it is possible to strike a harmonious balance between the two. In an impressive scheme for the Sinfonia Varsovia's new concert hall in Warsaw, Pucher has produced a hall that adopts the basic shoebox shape, but in which balconies run elegant rings around the stage, placing listeners close to the musicians. What makes this development so elegant, however, isnot just the sci-fi swirls of its auditorium, but the way in which the concert hall is hidden behind a vast expanse of wall that appears to float above its foyer. It is quite the opposite of an iconic structure, creating instead a sense of mystery that piques curiosity, luring listeners in from its public gardens to explore. 'I didn't want a building where you judge the music by its architecture,' explain Pucher. 'I wanted to created more of a sense of fairytale.'
Whether or not these halls succeed aethetically with the concert-going public comes down, to an extent, to personal taste. A concert hall is comparable to a wine glass: just as a suitable glass can bring out the qualities of a fine wine, so a building can bring out the finer nuances of its music. As with wines, so too our taste in acoustics can vary, depending on what we're used to. It's why today's architects and their acousticians consult closely with the players who are to perform in their spaces, as they are the ones who will ultimately bring out the best, or worst, in the hall. Looked at in this light, it's no coincidence that the Musikverein, the Concertgebouw and the Philharmonie have the best acoustics--they also contain the world's best orchestra. The Helsinki Philharmonic will have plenty to prove.
(Armsterdam's Concertgebouw)
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