M u s i c
Give us a new hall
Peter Phillips
Two cheers, I think, for the 50th anniversary of the Royal Festival Hall. Not three, because it is outdated in design and acoustics, and anyway spawned the appalling Queen Elizabeth Hall et al; and not one, because of all the exciting events it has hosted, those of 50 years ago all the more exciting for having been held in a building which was then state-of-the-art. Indeed the RFH is still a handsome sight, an impressive piece of architecture which was revolutionary at the time in suspending the main hall in its shell. But London of course now needs a three-cheers symphony hall.
It doesn't sound to me as though the politicians have any such thing in mind, or the vision to conceive it. I took part recently in a live radio discussion about the future of the RFH. The invited speakers included officers of the mayoralty, the planning division at the South Bank and representatives from groups which regularly use the hall. Without exception they assumed that the South Bank complex was there to stay, which obliged them to adopt the tone of voice that says: 'We have lots of wonderful, stimulating new ideas for this well-loved venue, which will surely attract new audiences. There's something exciting happening here every hour of the day. Come and try it.' (Sub-text: We're trying very hard to scotch any popular notion that these buildings are temples to elitist culture, unattractive or past it. And the expense is justified because the place exists and it is politically less damaging to keep it going than to close it down.) This scrabbling for audiences 'from every section of the community' is undermined by that very tone of voice. It is too eager, too desperate and too condescending. I believe that the potential audience for any traditional activity worth putting on in a public hall is effectively unlimited — at least well beyond the meagre capacity of any hall. (Of course there are always going to be those who will never take an interest in such things, and should be put out of mind — rather than obsequiously appealed to — from the outset). But the interested types know who they are and will join in at their own speed, which will slow down if they feel they are being specially targeted or cajoled. When people leave their houses for an evening's diversion they want to be more certain than when they leave it to go to work that they're going to enjoy themselves. This may involve an element of challenge, but challenge in the context of relaxation. The 'tone of voice' implies the challenge but not the relaxation, and people duly stay away.
Little of this justifying would be necessary if London had a Birmingham Symphony Hall or a Manchester Bridgewater Hall. These spaces carry with them a frisson which guarantees that more of that potential audience does turn out, because just to go into them is an exciting experience no matter what is being staged. And their quality of sound is of a quite different order from that of halls built in the Fifties. Indeed there has been such an advance in acoustical science in the last ten years that one may be fairly certain that a hall built now will be a good investment for many decades hence.
This was simply not the case 50 years ago. I am not advocating that the RFH be demolished — it would make an excellent conference centre; but someone needs to think ahead. Are we to have another 50 years of a building which will soon be as embarrassing as Victorian town halls have become as concert venues? There was a lot of self-congratulatory waffle at the radio conference about London being one of the three genuinely cosmopolitan cities of the world (with New York and Tokyo). The truth is that in the matter of auditoriums for music London lags behind at least two of its own provincial cities.
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