Some of the harshest words spoken about the concert hall’s sonic properties came from the classical end of the music spectrum. Music critic Bernard Zuel’s review of Laura Marling’s 2012 concert highlighted “awful sound” that was “woefully thin and scattered”, adding that “not surprisingly, there were people at the interval confessing they struggled to feel a connection with what was happening on stage.” You can hear every minute detail now – right up to the back row, everything pings through Andrew Haveron, SSO concertmaster Writing in 2007, critic John Shand decried a room in which “low frequencies turn to sludge, high frequencies ping around, and the presence of drums makes jazz sound like the 1812 Overture.” I was flabbergasted. The hall’s sonic shortcomings have been a staple of music critic columns for decades. These are all designed to address sound issues that have bedevilled the venue since its inauguration in 1973. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardianįor audiences, the most obvious physical changes to the concert hall are the large petal-shaped fibreglass sound reflectors installed above the stage (the largest weigh in at 160kg), the diffusive patterns on wooden panels on the box fronts around the stage and the retractable reflectors on the concert hall side wall. Their rig was just too heavy and that was something they weren’t willing to compromise.”įibreglass sound reflectors above the stage. We’ve had to rest them on the stage itself.”įans missed out on a concert hall Chemical Brothers performance for that reason, too: “We couldn’t physically accommodate the set. “They’ve been impossible to hang properly in the concert hall. “Acts like Underworld, for example, who have been incredible playing in this room, use gigantic LED walls as part of their show,” says Marshall. Magnificent as it is, the room’s acoustics are famously haphazard, and its stage machinery has been unable to cope with some of today’s tech-heavy touring shows. #SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE SYDNEY SERIES#They have an experience you don’t get playing a series of interchangeable black box theatres from one city to the next.”īut playing the hall (which was completed by Australian architect Peter Hall after Utzon’s resignation from the project in 1966) has always involved a measure of compromise. “It’s a symbol of the avant-garde, a marvel of architecture. Jørn Utzon and Ove Arup with project engineer Povl Ahm discussing the roof structure in Utzon’s studio, 1959, Hellebaek, Denmark.“It’s become one of those venues artists really want to play,” says Ben Marshall, the Sydney Opera House’s head of contemporary music. The roof evolved from the freeform shape of the architect’s original sketch to the spherical geometry of the final design. In the quest to maintain Utzon’s original vision, Arup engineers developed as many as 12 different versions of a concrete roof design between 19. The search for a solution was driven by a close creative partnership between the architect and engineer team. The geometrically undefined curves of the roof needed to be developed in order for the building to be built. Many contemporary critics in the profession considered it impossible to build. Utzon’s ambitious vision for the shape of the roof posed a huge number of structural engineering challenges. By March, the Arup engineering firm was formally appointed to the project team. On hearing of the appointment in February, Ove Arup sent Utzon a personal letter suggesting they collaborate. His design had no engineering consultation upon submission. In early 1957, the Danish architect Jørn Utzon won the competition for the Sydney Opera House design on the strength of powerful drawings - an expressive charcoal sketch showing a building with a dramatic roof composed of gravity-defying curves.
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