Music: Minneapolis Opening

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During the afternoon, gardeners were still dumping topsoil. The whine of vacuum cleaners sounded in the foyer. Along the lobby, leatherette ottomans were being bounced into place to the cacophonous accompaniment of electric drills. "We have only five hours to go," said President Donald L. Engle of the Minnesota Orchestral Association, surveying the mess. "But I tell you this—we'll be ready." |

They were. On a clear, comparatively balmy evening in Minneapolis last week, the Minnesota Orchestra finally got the permanent home for which it has been waiting 71 years. A capacity crowd of 2,573 discovered that the new $10 million Orchestra Hall is a winner, with truly superior sound. The term for the way in which a stage projects sound into an auditorium is "throw." Orchestra Hall has a throw that even Tom Seaver might envy. As Conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski's opening program of Bach, Ives, Stravinsky and Beethoven made clear, the new hall also has remarkably even dispersion of sound (with slight exceptions in some of the side balcony areas), admirable balance and clarity, a striding bass and an exciting musical presence unsurpassed perhaps by any concert hall in the world. Skrowaczewski's readings tended to be very soft or very loud, as well as very fast or slow. At times the volume of the orchestra approached the painful—clearly the result of the conductor's understandable desire to show off the hall's dynamic range.

The Secret. Designing the acoustics in a modern concert hall is a difficult task, and results are not totally predictable. Avery Fisher (formerly Philharmonic) Hall in New York's Lincoln Center is the classic case of aural bad luck. Twelve years after its opening, it still has glum sound, despite millions of dollars spent in revisions. Two of its most distinguished visitors, the Boston Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra, will pack up and move back to venerable Carnegie Hall next season.

The acoustics of Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall are the work of Cyril M. Harris of New York, a professor of architecture and electrical engineering at Columbia University. He is already responsible for the excellent sonics at the Metropolitan Opera and the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. By now it is only fair to hail Harris as an acoustics virtuoso. Harris' secret, if it can be called that, is to stick as closely as possible to classic European models like Vienna's Grosser Musikvereinssaal. That means a rectangular shape, plenty of wood and plaster, no concrete or vinyl, and a minimum of carpeting and plush upholstery on chairs. Harris has made his chairs of oak and carefully tested foam cushions. He has even installed individual lockers in access corridors to encourage dowagers to leave their fur coats outside the music-making area.