Walt Disney Concert Hall, home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
In Friday’s (6/16) Bloomberg, James S. Russell writes, “A new home for the New York Philharmonic opened in 1962, an optimistic, modern design intended to invite a music-hungry middle class (enamored with its charismatic and TV-friendly music director, Leonard Bernstein) and reinforce the city as a capital of culture…. It was the vanguard venue of the massive new Lincoln Center arts complex. But the space immediately struggled with architectural and acoustic shortcomings … The latest iteration … reopened in October 2022 … It was a daring bet by Lincoln Center and the Philharmonic’s president and chief executive officer, Deborah Borda, yet not an unprecedented one: The costly campaign to correct what is now called David Geffen Hall is consistent with a history of concert halls that have inspired extraordinary dedication, one that shows how institutions with a relatively specialized audience can have such an outsize effect on city identity…. Early 20th-century US venues like Boston Symphony Hall and Severance Hall in Cleveland stood as defining musical and architectural institutions in their cities…. These days, this cultural infrastructure enjoys a less exalted role… Still, the allure of a showstopper concert hall is undiminished.” The article discusses concert halls around the world.
