Its early to say.
But the inaugural concert today (with two very different ensembles) was encouraging.
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Did the music enfold audiences rather than blare at them from afar?
The results from the first noises were provisionally encouraging and firmly inconclusive.
Mixing amplified and natural instruments defies the halls ability to sound ideal for either.
When the Philharmonic plays alone, that drapery will retract.
Im not ready to declare the hall a flop or a triumph.
The strings sawed away and still wound up sounding uncharacteristically timid.
Theres no need to panic that $550 million was spent in vain.
The hall could yet prove perfect.
In any case, the relationship between orchestra and habitat will settle over time.
Musicians must adjust to a new clarity that can be both revelatory and unforgiving.
In a pre-opening rehearsal of Beethovens Symphony No.
After the break, van Zweden suggested they ease up on that same passage.
Out in the hall, its too loud, almost harsh, he said, apologetically.
He gave a downbeat to repeat those bars and grinned when the strings instantly mellowed.
The opening concert had other tasks to perform.
Lincoln Centers original sin is far from unique in American history, and it deserves to be remembered.
Before the renovation, Foster + Partners proposed tearing it down and starting from scratch.
That scheme, too, was scrapped as too costly and time-consuming.
In the final version, the changes are mostly internal.
Williams and Tsien are experts at making small spaces feel grand and large ones intimate.
The lobby is far more generous and welcoming than it used to be.
A ring of speakers mounted in the ceiling semi-confines the music to an invisible cylinder of sound.
The architects arent relying on that.
The new design amps up the theatricality of the old one.
The colors are brighter, the lines more sinuous yet sharper.
Distances that once seemed endless have contracted.
These flourishes are engineered to flatter the sounds emanating from the stage.
Balconies curve and dip like ripples on a lake.
Different-size ensembles get different amounts of real estate, and the separation between audience and performers can be adjusted.
A wall of bentwood slats disguises a bank of speakers the electronic substitute for a real pipe organ.
(The hall had one butlost it in 1976.)
At the opening concert, the move prompted the auditoriums first bout of applause.
But thats as flamboyant as the auditorium gets.
Our sound world is as permeated by machinery and amplification as our visual field is by electric light.
Our homes ding, buzz, beep, and blurt.
Amid all this power-boosted din, the concert hall is a natural-sound preserve.
That doesnt make it a quiet place.
Equally crucial is the quality of quiet.
Theres a catch: Amplified music has to sound rich, round, and present.
(The first version of Philharmonic Hall was hardwired for television broadcast in black and white only.)
Even in recent buildings, the tension between classical and amplified music can be a killer.
Borda vowed not to make that mistake again.
For Geffen Hall, Scarbrough developed a series of preset configurations for the halls varying demands.
The new lobby, with its immense LED screen.
Blue and gold detailing by Tod Williams Billie Tsien.
There have been fundamental shifts.
Thats one reason to initiate the hall with the new work about San Juan Hill.
She has already put her stamp on the campus with eclectic outdoor programming over the summer.
Orchestra, the only visiting symphonic ensemble to be invited onto the new stage this season.
That aspiration was there from the beginning.
Their place is not on the periphery of daily life but at its center, he said.
(A plaque inscribed with those words hangs on a wall near the Vivian Beaumont Theater.)
Its not a problem that were still asking that question, says Lincoln Center president Henry Timms.
We should be asking it always.
