Cleveland Orchestra warms up new concert hall in Miami

by Lawrence A. Johnson / South Florida Sun-Sentinel
August 21, 2006

MIAMI -- It's a rare classical event in South Florida when the audience is more elegantly dressed than the symphony musicians seated onstage.

But Sunday morning's open rehearsal by the Cleveland Orchestra at the new Knight Concert Hall was far from your typical pre-concert run-through. Indeed, this first public event at the $450 million Carnival Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Miami was freighted with massive significance for the region's cultural landscape.

The Carnival Center, which will open in October, boasts not one but two state-of-the-art performance venues: the Ziff Ballet Opera House, which will be home to Florida Grand Opera and Miami City Ballet, and the Knight Concert Hall, which will host the Concert Association of Florida, as well as a variety of pop, jazz and world music.

In many ways, Sunday's rehearsal was about much more than the event itself, a fundraiser for the Carnival Center at $250 a ticket. It also provided a sneak preview of the Cleveland Orchestra's 10-year residency, scheduled to begin in January, and an opportunity for acousticians to test the hall with a first-class orchestra and actual bodies in the seats.

But most importantly, it was the first opportunity for South Florida concertgoers to enter the arts center, designed by architect Cesar Pelli, and hear live music performed in one of the gleaming new venues.

The response from audience members was uniformly enthusiastic. "Fabulous," said Kathryn Carroll, a regular at classical events. "I think the hall sounds excellent."

Caroline Mitchell, a violist, said she liked the hall's reverberation. "I'm a musician and singer, so I was really interested," she said. "The sound was great. I enjoyed it tremendously."

There was no attempt to jazz up the rehearsal either with audience-friendly short works or flashy presentation. Music director Franz Welser-Möst, clad in jeans and untucked polo shirt, led the Cleveland musicians, in similarly informal attire, through chunks of Bruckner, Prokofiev and Verdi.

The Knight Concert Hall's design is by Russell Johnson, who is also responsible for the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach. Despite its size, the airy 2,200-seat room has an intimate feel, with superb sightlines from all four levels. Officials from Artec, Johnson's acoustical firm, have repeatedly cautioned against making snap judgments on the hall's acoustics. They maintain that it will take months of tinkering and fine-tuning of its adjustable elements, the large canopy over the stage and reverberation chambers that encircle the room, for the best results.

Even so, at this early stage, the sound was already very impressive. In the Adagio from Bruckner's Fifth Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra's lean brilliance was accurately conveyed with refined, transparent textures. Especially striking were the well-defined bass response in the lower strings and the woodwinds' rich, rounded timbres.

Though all sections of the orchestra emerged clearly, some main floor locations had a less "present" sound than others, as is often the case. Also, in the coda's climactic brass chorales, there was some marked over-reverberance, with the brass in full cry sounding harsh and tending to spread. Further adjustments will likely retool the hall for louder-volume passages.

But the most striking quality was how consistently clear and detailed the sound was from several different positions in the hall, from the furthest back row of the balcony's vertigo-inducing third tier to the side boxes and choral riser seats behind the stage. Those rows are likely to prove hugely popular, offering surprisingly fine sound and an up-close view of conductor and musicians.

Gary Hanson, executive director of the Cleveland Orchestra, said he thought "all the fundamentals are right" with the hall's sound.

"The most important thing is the size and shape of the room, and they got that exactly right," Hanson said.

At a news conference after the event, conductor Welser-Möst also expressed satisfaction with the initial results. "In a lot of halls you can't get that warm string sound," the Austrian conductor said. "I would say that is already there."

Welser-Möst said at their first rehearsals on Friday there was some echo on stage that needed to be resolved.

"One of the biggest issues for us was the canopy," he said. "Over the last two days we tried to determine how high to put the canopy … also to open the [reverberation] doors, but not too much."

"It's really, really a good hall, and it has all the potential to become a great hall."

Though not publicized by Artec or the Carnival Center, last week's initial tuning duties fell not to the Clevelanders but to the Florida Classical Orchestra. The local musicians, pit ensemble of Florida Grand Opera, were led in tests last Monday and Tuesday by Cleveland's assistant conductor Andrew Grams.

In the coming weeks, other local organizations will be involved with further sound tests and tuning in the hall, including the Master Chorale of South Florida, the South Beach Chamber Ensemble, actors in spoken word tests and several jazz groups.

Also on Sunday the Cleveland Orchestra unveiled more details of its South Florida residency, including expanded activities with the New World Symphony and the University of Miami, as well as tentative plans for live radio broadcasts of its Miami concerts.