A Diary of the Philadelphia Orchestra's Asian Trip and Concert Hall Acoustics

[MylesBAstor]

We performed the opening concert of our three week tour last night. The local hall is small with intimate seating and a beautiful view of the bay in the background. Unfortunately, the acoustics are a bit disappointing and not very balanced in the highs and lows. The mids are OK but the others frequencies are rolled off so the orchestra lacks its usual lushness and fullness of sound. Nevertheless, the concert was a success with a very appreciative and enthusiastic audience.


I am heading over to the hall shortly for tonight's concert and traveling to Shanghai tomorrow.

[astrotoy]

Thanks, Myles. This isn't you writing is it? We've been at the HK concert hall - nice views, but not great sonics. More round than rectangular so I think the acoustics may suffer from that. There are many seats behind the orchestra with the balcony running completely around the hall. The concert hall is in a large complex very near the Star Ferry Terminal on the Kowloon side. overlooking Hong Kong Harbour. I was a consultant for the Hong Kong Space Museum (planetarium) which was the first building in the complex back in 1978, when it was being built.

We heard the HK Philharmonic play there a few years ago with the wonderful SF Bay Area pianist Garrick Ohlsson playing the Brahms second Piano Concerto. The HK Phil has had a series of fine music directors who were in the dotage (David Atherton and Edo de Waart were two of the more recent ones), until they got the younger Jaap van Zweden who started in 2012, with a contract running through this year. Of course, he was recently named as the new director of New York Phil starting in a year or so.

Larry

[MylesBAstor]

No it's from Bob Grossman who plays in the Philly Orchestra for 36 years. He's a die hard audiophile who will after he returns from the Asia trip begin reviewing for Positive Feedback. I also hope Bob will be joining the forum when things start to slow down! Great guy and what enthusiasm!

[MylesBAstor]

Some updates from Bob.

I actually performed at two different concerts today. The first was at an outdoor theater on the grounds of a park adjacent to Shanghai Disneyland. That was a side by side shared concert with the local orchestra. I prepared and coordinated the music for both orchestras to practice and be prepared ahead of our joint rehearsal and performance today.

Then tonight was our main concert of Sibelius Finlandia, Grieg Peer Gynt and Bruckner Sym 4. My librarian work of editing music is never over and complete. I needed to make a correction to the violin music when a tremelo mark was discovered as missing at last night's concert. The players knew the music by ear to perform it properly last night but I wanted to mark the music accurately for future uses. We leave in the morning for Beijing.