Room Acoustics Writ Large

Since writing about Manhattan’s renovated Geffen Hall in this space in our January issue, I’ve attended two concerts there. I thought I’d report back. The first of the two performances—the hall’s “Grand Gala” concert, though they didn’t invite me to the fancy dinner afterward—included works by young Puerto Rico–born composer Angélica Negrón (You Are the Prelude) and Ludwig van Beethoven (Symphony No.9). The second included works by Stravinsky (Symphonies of Wind Instruments), Bartók (Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra, with Daniil Trifonov and Sergei Babayan), and Sibelius (Symphony No.7).

I’m ready, tentatively, to call Geffen’s acoustical renovation a major success, if an idiosyncratic one. It is now a great (if slightly odd)-sounding hall. (A caveat: There are far more great music halls in the world that I haven’t heard than that I have heard. I have a rather small sample to compare Geffen to.)

Almost everyone praises Carnegie Hall’s acoustics—and Geffen sounds nothing like Carnegie, which is rich and reverberant to a point where, for me, the music gets in its own way, at least at the seats I’m usually sitting in. I’ve never sat up front.

The Geffen acoustic is very dry and clean, with very well-controlled—I’m tempted to write “carefully engineered”—reverberation. Music played softly by a single instrument can be heard clearly, easily, and with full timbre even toward the back of the orchestra section, where I sat both times. (I’ve so far sat in the 23rd and 27th rows, once in the middle and once toward the left side.) The hall has serious grunt; impactful bass reaches far back.

Beethoven’s Ninth is always a thrill, and bass Davóne Tines was extraordinary as soloist, but the most successful performance I’ve heard so far was the Sibelius. That’s probably because of the music’s clean textures—notes rarely got in the way of notes, and that familiar Sibelius momentum was unimpeded. Another likely factor: Between the two performances, the orchestra had more time to get used to the new acoustic.

Negrón’s You Are the Prelude was a fascinating experience. At one point in the piece, a large chorus (the same used in the Beethoven) bent a complex chord off-pitch until it became black noise, harmonic shifting into anharmonic. It was like a black tunnel opening up in space. (I have a touch of synesthesia, and I saw exactly that.)

The Bartók was less successful. To avoid blocking the orchestra, the two pianos had their lids removed. Their sound wandered up to the rafters (or would have if there had been rafters) and got lost.

I’ve made contact with one of the two principal acousticians and will interview him for a Stereophile feature. I want to explore the connection between large-hall acoustics and the challenges we all face in our listening rooms. I’m hoping he’ll lead me on a Geffen tour.

I need to hear more music, from a wider variety of seats and sections; I’m especially curious what the upper levels sound like. Meanwhile, if you make it to Geffen Hall for a performance, drop me a line and tell me what you think. My email address is [email protected].

Siberian Pianos
I don’t just listen to a lot of music; I read a lot about it, too. The most interesting of the music-related books I’ve read recently is Sophy Roberts’s The Lost Pianos of Siberia (Grove Atlantic, 2020).

Roberts is neither a musician nor a music scholar. Rather, she’s a British adventure-travel writer. This is her first book, but she has extensive clips from prominent magazines including Condé Nast Traveler, Financial Times, and 1843 magazine from The Economist.

Early on, in Mongolia, Roberts meets up with Odgerel Sampilnorov, an “extraordinary pianist” who learned to play on “an old instrument … trucked in from the modern capital, Ulanbaatar.” With assistance from a patron, Sampilnorov trained for nine years in Italy. She gives local recitals inside a ger, better known here as a yurt, “on Giercke’s Yamaha baby grand.” (Giercke is Odgerel’s main patron.) “Outside the ger‘s wooden door was a wide plateau cupped by mountains, the steppe’s velvet folds studded with tombs and ancient standing stones left by successive waves of nomadic people. Yaks and horses, more numerous than people in Mongolia, grazed on the riverbank below.” That Yamaha, though, was “out of sorts,” which sent Roberts off in search of another piano.

Roberts sets off through Siberia, which, as we learn, has a rich musical history. As she seeks a piano for Odgerel, she tells stories about the land through the lens of its musical culture. Among many other pianos, we learn about a very special upright, found in a piano tuner’s shop in the imposing Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater. The piano is a Grotrian-Steinweg, made by the German company formed when one Heinrich Steinweg moved to New York, changed his name, and started a piano company.

With assistance, financial and otherwise, from locals, the piano is refurbished and transported to that Mongolian ger for Odgerel’s use. “Kostya and I would lie on our backs on the tent’s yak-hair floor,” Roberts writes. Kostya is the man who rebuilt the piano. “Both of us liked listening in. Sometimes Kostya cried, sometimes he smiled, overwhelmingly proud about the piano’s sound he had spent months repairing.”

In the end, this book is about the value of music and our attachments to things, the meaning we and history imbue those things with, and how it all comes together to make our lives better.

On the book’s website, Roberts presents gorgeous photographs by Michael Turek (who accompanied Roberts on many of her journeys), recordings of Odgerel playing various pianos mentioned in the book, and impressive videos of people and landscape, also by Turek.

Odgerel has an album on the major streaming services, the oddly named Mongolian Composers Piano Pieces.

All of these, but especially the book, are highly recommended

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