Maison symphonique de Montréal (2013)

[identifiant]

Ce n'est pas un musée non plus, c'est une Orchestre. Ils ont besoin de l'orgue.

 

 

Moi je suis pas un fan du violoncelle, on devrait mettre des sculptures a la place.

[ymenard]

L'orgue fait partie de l'instrumentation d'un orchestre (le O de OSM). Il doit en faire partie.

[IluvMTL]

I noticed this week that the wood cladding has started to appear on the east side.

[Rusty]

yeah little bit they started /..... saw the west side from Demaisonneuve is really stunning ... looks classy ;-) almost finished

[LindbergMTL]

En espérant que les taggeurs restent loin de cet ensemble...

[MtlMan]

En tout cas, s'ils taggent le bois ils auront travaillé fort pour se rendre......

[IluvMTL]

MUSIC

 

ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN

MONTREAL— From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Jul. 02, 2011 6:00AM EDT

 

here’s a lot of dust swirling around the northeast corner of Place des Arts, where a long trek through a desert of disappointed hopes is coming to an end for l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. After at least seven failed attempts to build a dedicated concert hall, the OSM is just two months away from its first rehearsals at the building known as l’Adresse symphonique.

 

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PHOTOS

The OSM's new home

 

Outside, its steep, four-storey glass front on Boulevard de Maisonneuve sets it apart from the ridged concrete wall of the Théâtre Maisonneuve next door. Unlike the rest of Place des Arts, which turns inward on a raised central plaza, the new building pointedly opens out to the street.

 

Inside, the auditorium looks like a concrete replica of a concert hall, with three balconies, a stage and no seats. Workmen are lining the terraced side balconies with the stiffened panels of Quebec beech that will eventually cover almost every surface. Each seating position on the sloping main floor is marked by a fist-sized vent, through which a slow-moving, inaudible mass of air will cool or warm the 1,900-seat room.

 

It’s noisy in here now, with power tools barking into use every minute, but when the hall is finished and empty, it should be utterly silent: The whole room is acoustically isolated on heavy rubber pads, like the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto, an earlier project by l’Adresse symphonique’s Diamond + Schmitt Architects.

 

The project is running on time for the opening performance, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, on Sept. 7. In another sense, it’s at least 20 years late, and is succeeding – just as some earlier hall projects failed – in part because of political factors beyond the OSM’s control.

 

Six years ago, Montreal arts maven and Liberal Senator Serge Joyal published a widely discussed open letter about “Montréal déclassé,” in which he mourned the city’s decline as a cultural capital. A prime target of his commentary was the city’s decision to spend federal infrastructure funds on sewers and hospitals – at a time when Toronto was using such money to spark a boom in cultural building projects. Montrealers were stung to realize their city was falling behind in what Le Devoir called “le combat des villes.”

 

That discontent fuelled the development of Quartier des Spectacles, an attempt by a consortium of arts groups and government agencies to redefine a one-square-kilometre area as the city’s artistic heart. In the past few years, that zone, which includes Place des Arts and numerous theatres, galleries and artists’ studios, has seen intense construction and renovation activity. L’adresse symphonique is part of that broad agenda of cultural renovation. Its glass front on Maisonneuve looks out over a grassy new amphitheatre across the street – one of two open-air spaces developed around Place des Arts for free performances.

 

The new hall is also the first cultural project built according to the province’s recent PPP rules for public works, whereby a private consortium builds and finances something to provincial specifications, runs and profits from the facility for a set time (in this case, 30 years), and then yields it to the province for a dollar. Before the government even solicited bids, it hired an acoustics firm, New York’s Artec Consultants, to set the parameters for a concert space that would have the resonance, intimacy and clarity of sound that Place des Arts’ 2,990-seat Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier has always lacked.

 

“It all started from a room we drew,” says Tateo Nakajima of Artec, which helped design the Chan Centre in Vancouver, the Jack Singer Concert Hall in Calgary, and Kitchener’s Centre in the Square. “Each bidder proposed something, and we decided whether we could make it work.”

 

That rule has also governed the detailed working out of Diamond’s winning proposal. “The acoustics drive the design,” says Diamond. “You have to mould the acoustical demands into an architectural expression that works as a room.”

 

For the OSM, better acoustics are the main prize, but not the only one. The orchestra has first pick of all performance dates at the new hall, so will be able to claim the Saturday nights that were difficult to get at Wilfrid-Pelletier. The OSM will also play all rehearsals on the stage, instead of in the varied and dissimilar rehearsal halls it now uses.

 

“You think of the Vienna Philharmonic and the Musikverein, or [Amsterdam's] Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Concertgebouw, [where] the resident orchestra develops a real identity with its acoustic space,” says OSM music director Kent Nagano, an internationally eminent conductor whose arrival in Montreal in 2006 was seen as a coup for the orchestra. “That helps develop its overall identity. We've never had that luxury till now.”

 

The catch is that the OSM won’t be l’Adresse symphonique’s only resident orchestra. Between rehearsing, performing and hosting special concerts, it will take 240 days of the hall’s calendar next season, leaving 125 available for ensembles such as the L’Orchestre Métropolitain.

 

That orchestra’s home-grown music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, is riding a tidal wave of international renown to rival that of OSM’s Nagano, following appointments as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic. Nézet-Séguin’s Montreal band devotes most of its calendar to concerts in churches and maisons de la culture in the suburbs, but is increasing its single-performance programs at Place des Arts next year, from seven to 11.

 

L’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal is actually decreasing its regular programs next season, from 30 at Wilfrid-Pelletier to 24 at the new hall. The OSM’s number of regular performances, however, will remain about the same, at 48. Since the orchestra is moving into a smaller container, it’s going to repeat programs more often.

 

Both orchestras have raised their ticket prices for seats in the new hall, but the OSM’s have gone up more, widening a price gap that had already existed. The best seats on the floor or front balcony cost $57 for an OM concert; at the OSM they’ll be $100.50.

 

“A lot of people have moved to us from the OSM” because of the price differential, says Luce Moreau, the Orchestre Métropolitain’s executive director. Ticket revenues for OM’s advance sales have jumped 62 per cent, and more than a fifth of subscribers are new. Moreau expects to add more concerts in the OM’s second season at the hall, and to increase programs to 15 by 2015.

 

Nagano certainly knows from experience that objects in the rear-view mirror can come up faster than you think. In 1996, as music director of Britain’s Hallé Orchestra, he gave the inaugural concert at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, built to replace a multipurpose hall of Victorian vintage. The Hallé hoped the Bridgewater would give its sagging fortunes a lift, but the main beneficiary was the venue’s “second orchestra,” the BBC Philharmonic, which rapidly expanded its programs and audience. “The Hallé has learned the hard way that a new concert hall attracts entrepreneurs,” wrote The Guardian’s David Ward, after the hall’s first year of operation.

 

Madeleine Careau, the OSM’s chief executive officer, points out that her orchestra’s ticket revenues are also growing: Subscription renewals are up 10 per cent over this time last year, and the first three inaugural concerts in September are already sold out. But, she says that bigger audiences for the city’s lesser classical ensembles are a good thing for the OSM. “My feeling is that one day those people will want to try Kent Nagano and the OSM,” she says.

 

Either way, Montrealers can look forward to a very different orchestral experience at Place des Arts. It used to be said that to really hear what the OSM could do, you had to follow it to Carnegie Hall. As of Sept. 7, if all goes as planned, the trip will be a lot shorter.

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/music/montreal-symphonys-new-home-may-have-a-downside/article2083650/singlepage/#articlecontent

 

One Spectacular Quarter: Some Facts and Figures

 

Montreal’s downtown Quartier de Spectacles packs a lot of performance, display and art-making activity into a single square kilometre. Some numbers:

 

80 cultural spaces, including the Musée d’art contemporain, the Bon Pasteur Historic Chapel, the Galeries d’art contemporain du Belgo, and several new outdoor performance venues

 

28,000 seats in 30 salles de spectacles, including Théâtre du Nouveau-Monde, Le Monument-National and the theatres of the Université du Québec à Montréal and Place des Arts

 

80 per cent of the city’s entertainment facilities

 

450 cultural enterprises

 

7,000 cultural workers

[SKYMTL]

Typical Globe and Mail trite. Suck readers in with a controversial title and then fail to mention anything really negative about the subject.

[boluda]

Drôle d'article.

[IluvMTL]

Not surprised to hear that Orchestre Métropolitain subscriptions are selling well.