Wednesday, January 05, 2000
Cleveland polishes musical gem
Severance Hall expansion part of national trend to revive symphonies' glory days
BY JANELLE GELFAND
The Cincinnati Enquirer
69-year-old Severance Hall glows at night.
(Cleveland Orchestra photos)
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When Severance Hall opened in Cleveland in 1931, you arrived by limousine. Your chauffeur dropped you off and whisked you away at the end of the performance.
“The way we live today is quite different from the way we lived in 1931,” says David M. Schwarz, founder of David M. Schwarz Architectural Services of Washington, D.C., and design architect for Severance Hall's renovations.
“In the early days of Severance, you would go to a seated dinner at your home, where there would be a staff of people to arrange preconcert and post-concert events. Now, those occur at the hall.”
When the Cleveland Orchestra moves back into its freshly remodeled home on Saturday with a gala concert (broadcast live at 9 p.m., Channels 16 and 48) it will be part of a nationwide trend.
Renovated stage.
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Orchestras are updating patron amenities to fit today's lifestyle, from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's $110 million expanded and renovated Symphony Center to the Dallas Symphony's $80 million Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, which sports two restaurants.
Because it's not your grandfather's concert hall anymore, the whole symphony experience is changing. In the 21st century, concert halls will be places where people can socialize in chi-chi restaurants, stroll elegant arcades, shop, have a cappuccino and participate in great music.
“Twenty-five years ago, people didn't build restaurants into sports stadiums. Now they do. There's more of an inclination to want to provide the amenities that will allow you to make a complete evening of it,” says Gary Hanson, Cleveland Orchestra's associate executive director.
Cleveland's $36 million project includes a five-story, 39,000-square-foot addition to the rear of Severance Hall, creating new lobbies, a full-time restaurant open for lunch and dinner, a retail store, new restrooms and state-of-the-art backstage facilities.
Not only the audience has changed over 68 years.
“When the building was built there were no female members of the orchestra,” Mr. Schwarz says. “So, as female members were added, they kept finding nooks and crannies to stick them into.” The hall is now fitted with dressing rooms for both sexes.
New orchestra shell
Musically, the biggest innovation will be the construction of a new orchestra shell, with the hall's historic, 6,025-pipe E.M. Skinner Pipe Organ at its center in back. The music world will be watching to see if acousticians have succeeded in preserving Severance's pristine acoustics — the quality responsible for “the Cleveland sound” — while tweaking it to make minor improvements.
Other facets of the project include the restoration of interior spaces in the 2000-seat auditorium, the 400-seat Reinberger Chamber Hall, the Grand Foyer and lobby areas, as well as improved access to the building.
When it opened in February 1931, it was a state-of-the-art facility, primarily the gift of John L. Severance, president of the orchestra's board, as a memorial to his wife, Elisabeth.
Designed by the Cleveland firm Walker and Weeks, Severance Hall is one of the city's architectural gems. Its neo-Georgian facade, made of Indiana limestone, adds a graceful note to the corner of Euclid Avenue and East Boulevard in University Circle. But the hall was not designed for the explosion of the automobile. After an underground parking garage was built, 90 percent of the audience entered through the basement.
“The first thing the user notices,” Mr. Schwarz says, “is you don't feel you're going in the back door and down a rabbit hole anymore.”
The only previous renovation to Severance Hall was in 1958, when George Szell, Cleveland's music director from 1946 to 1970, installed an acoustical shell. That shell, a modern mismatch to the lavish art deco interior, effectively entombed the great organ, silencing it for decades.
It was housed above the stage, its sound piped in through loudspeakers for a time, then abandoned altogether. Music director Christoph von Dohnanyi has championed its return to its rightful place at the back of the stage, as is traditional in European halls.
“When we discovered it, it was a little like finding an old Model-T Ford in your garage with 200 miles,” says Thomas W. Morris, executive director.
The organ was built by Ernest M. Skinner of Boston, the premier American organ builder in the first half of the 20th century. Its $2 million restoration by the Schantz Organ Co. of Orrville, Ohio, will not be completed until January 2001, although the facade pipes are in place in the hall.
The organ's pipes onstage should benefit the sound, acousticians believe, by adding resonance and dispersing it.
But tinkering with an acoustical treasure has its risks. Mr. Szell, who led with legendary severity, molded the ensemble into one of the world's finest, a reputation that continues under Mr. Dohnanyi. The orchestra is renowned for its uncanny precision and unified sound — partly attributable to its rather “dry” hall. Could it lose the very quality that gives Cleveland its character?
“The biggest challenge when you're working in a hall that's already well respected is to make sure you don't do anything that moves it on the downside,” says acoustician Christopher Jaffe of Jaffe Holden Scarbrough (Norwalk, Conn.) “You really have to be careful there.”
As the acousticians began discussing the project with the musicians, it became clear the players desired more reverberation in the hall and improved onstage hearing.
“A lot of people talk about the Cleveland Orchestra being one of the three greatest orchestras in the world, with Vienna and Berlin, but we don't find Severance Hall listed among the top three halls in the world,” Mr. Morris says. “Things we wanted to see improved in the hall (were) more warmth and depth in the sound.”
Whether the team has been successful remains a question until Saturday. Mr. Jaffe, who designed an orchestra shell for Cincinnati's Music Hall in the 1960s, points out that the basic shape of Severance Hall remains unchanged. He had a “test run” earlier this month with a youth orchestra.
“I'm feeling very confident right now in terms of all three charges: building the new organ chamber, keeping the clarity and intimacy of Severance Hall, and moving toward getting a little more "liveness' within the hall without disturbing the sound that's there,” he says.
Kept its cachet
Severance Hall has been a construction zone for about two years. When crews moved into the public spaces, the orchestra realized the only way to finish the project on time was to move out. Since March, it has played in the 2,500-seat Allen Theatre, the last of five theaters in Playhouse Square Center to complete its own renovations in 1998. The re-opening is right on schedule.
“To move back in at the beginning of the century had an irresistible ring to it,” Mr. Morris says.
Despite the displacement and inconvenience, the Cleveland Orchestra has lost none of its cachet to Clevelanders. The audience has remained faithful, and the response to a $100 million campaign to fund the renovations and add to the endowment has been “overwhelming,” Mr. Morris says.
“I hear people talk about the general problem of aging audiences, and then I try and find data to support that,” Mr. Morris says. “There may be individual places that have that problem, but I know it's not a problem in a lot of places. It's certainly not a problem here.”
Now, with the youthful Franz Welser-Most in line to succeed Mr. Dohnanyi as music director in 2002, the orchestra is ready to celebrate.
“When we see a great treasure like Severance, the question becomes, what do you do with it?” Mr. Schwarz says.
“What the (Cleveland) Musical Arts Association decided to do was to try and turn a gem — into a gem that was appropriate for wearing in 2000 and beyond.”
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