Product Description
CD88230 Alice Tully Hall reopening
Streamed from the NPR website, recorded in AIFF(44,1kHz,16-bit) and encoded in
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Music Returns To Renovated Alice Tully Hall
MUSIC:
Sephardic Invocation: Three Romances
Bach: Chromatic fantasia and fugue in D minor
Osvaldo Golijov: Mariel
Stravinsky: Octet for Winds
Beethoven: Gross Fuge
Stravinsky: Suite from Pulcinella
MUSICIANS:
Jordi Savall, vičle
Montserrat Figueras, soprano
Driss el Maloumi, oud
Dmitri Psonis, santur
David Mayoral, percussion
Leon Fleisher, piano
The Brentano String Quartet
Artists of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Ani Kavafian & Arnaud Sussmann, violins
Paul Neubauer, viola
Fred Sherry, cello
Edgar Meyer, double bass
Ransom Wilson, flute
Stephen Taylor, oboe
David Shifrin, clarinet
Milan Turkovic & Peter Kolkay, bassoons
Kevin Cobb & Raymond Mase, trumpet
Michael Powell & John Rojak, trombones
Juilliard Orchestra
David Robertson, conductor
Music Returns To Renovated Alice Tully Hall
by Jeff Lunden
February 22, 2009 from WNYC - New York City's Lincoln Center is one of America's
premier performing-arts venues, but these days, it's just one big construction
site. The 45-year-old campus is undergoing a $1.2 billion renovation to make it
more modern and pedestrian-friendly. Sunday, the first part of the project is
being unveiled after a two-year reconstruction: Alice Tully Hall is reopening.
Ten days ago, the lobby of Alice Tully Hall was literally buzzing with
construction workers putting finishing touches on a wholesale transformation of
the space. Until the renovation, audiences entered the recital hall — which is
underground — through a dark, cramped doorway off Broadway into a windowless
lobby. Jane Moss, vice president of programming for Lincoln Center, says that
Tully was kind of the ugly stepsister to the much larger Avery Fisher Hall.
"Alice Tully Hall was sort of vaguely a bunker, though people sort of liked it,"
Moss says. "But it was definitely not in the same family as Avery Fisher Hall.
And now, they are of equal weight."
More Air, More Light
The redesigned lobby is airy and filled with light, surrounded by a high glass
wall that faces both Broadway and 65th Street. Elizabeth Diller, one of the
principal architects, says that part of the mission of the $159 million
renovation was to reorient the lobby toward the street — and vice versa.
"Not only was Tully cut off from the city and had a very, very minor entrance,
but it really had no identity," Diller says. "So what we did, very simply... we
expanded the space, we encased it in glass and we just put everything on view."
This includes a new dance studio for the Juilliard School, high above the lobby,
in a box, seemingly suspended in air. Now, people walking up and down the street
can see the dancers inside.
One feature of the lobby itself is a 50-foot-long curved bar, made of out of
Portuguese limestone and designed by Diller. It manages to be both a piece of
sculpture and a nice place to get a drink.
"It is a bar that's going to be open quite late into the night, and it's open to
the public," Diller says. "So, during intermissions, the audiences will use this
bar, as well. But it's a piece of the street. And anybody can walk off the
street at any time, have a sandwich, have a coffee, have a drink."
Not all of the changes to Alice Tully Hall have been so visible. One stated goal
of the architects was to make it quieter.
"We isolated the hall, structurally; it's a partial box-in-box," Diller says.
"We also isolated the nearby subway tracks to eliminate any rumble at all that
would be coming from the subway and transmitted through the rock."
Toning Down The Visual Noise
Diller says she wanted to create a sense of intimacy inside the auditorium by
getting rid of the "visual" noise, as well. So the walls and ceilings are
covered in an orange-tinted wood that's made from a single log of African Moab
wood, sheared very thin. Behind the wood, LED lighting makes a dramatic effect
just before each concert begins.
"The moment at which the murmur just dies down and all attention is focused
onstage, it's the moment where the wood just glows from the inside and exudes a
kind of blush," Diller says.
Of course, a concert hall is only as good as the sound inside it. Since
mid-January, Alice Tully Hall has been going through a series of acoustical
tune-ups.
Lincoln Center's Moss says she held her breath the first time musicians hit the
stage.
"You never know with acoustics," Moss says. "But within the first note, we knew
that we had an extraordinary hall on our hands, acoustically."
Audiences can hear the results firsthand Sunday, when Alice Tully Hall reopens
with a concert featuring Edgar Meyer, pianist Leon Fleischer and members of the
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.