Minneapolis Opening

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.

The look of good sound, in this case at least, can be startling. Built in as part of the ceiling and stage wall, both gray-blue, are 128 white cubes. Contrasted against the light brown oak walls and rose seats, the cubes suggest nothing so much as a mammoth rock fall frozen in the sky. Their purpose is to diffuse the sound; this they do admirably. They also are intended to provide a contemporary architectural equivalent for the cherubs, busts and coffers--all ideal sound deflectors--that adorned 18th and 19th century halls. Whether the cubes succeed as ornamentation is debatable, but then no one ever gave any awards to the Greek and Roman replicas in Boston's Symphony Hall.

Orchestra Hall is but the latest symbol of the flourishing cultural life in the Twin City area of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The public continues to flock to established arts institutions like the Walker Art Center and Guthrie Theater.

Three weeks ago, opening ceremonies were held for the $26 million Minneapolis Fine Arts Park, which among other things houses a full-time children's theater and $84 million worth of art and sculpture. Across the upper reaches of the Mississippi River, the St. Paul Opera and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra each year reaffirm themselves as exemplars of their kind.

The Minnesota Orchestra has long been the pride of them all. Founded in 1903 under Conductor Emil Oberhoffer, the orchestra spent its formative years playing in a succession of halls and auditoriums in Minneapolis. In 1930 it moved into Northrop Memorial Auditorium, a 4,800-seat barn on the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota. That has remained the home of the orchestra under its four most noted music directors, Eugene Ormandy (1931-36), Dimitri Mitropoulos (1937-49), Antal Dorati (1949-60), and the present leader, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (pronounced Skrova-cheff-ski), who took over in 1960. Ormandy was once asked what he would suggest to solve Northrop's acoustical problems. "Dynamite," he replied.

Just as a great violinist needs a great instrument to convey his full potential, so with an orchestra. A concert hall is an orchestra's sound box. Without a good one, an orchestra may perform well, but it never knows for sure. Says Conductor Skrowaczewski: "Northrop was horrible. The people couldn't hear the orchestra, and the players couldn't hear each other. Now even our mistakes can be heard clearly. I have the feeling we're going to be a much better orchestra from now on."

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