Kronberg Academy’s new Casals Forum: ‘a hall in which there is literally no bad seat’

‘The silence is as high-definition as the sound’. Not a sentence I’ve ever written about a new or indeed any concert hall. Yet these words, scribbled during September’s Kronberg Festival as Robin Ticciati and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE) delivered a fizzing Beethoven Symphony No 7 in the Kronberg Academy’s newly completed Casals Forum, go some way towards articulating some of the sheer quality and uniqueness of this new concert space. While it could be seen as kicking a UK readership when it’s already down to report on yet another brand new European concert hall, as London wonders whether it will ever get one of its own, what strikes me about the Casals Forum is how much food for thought it offers on that score.

Despite its diminutive size, the venue delivers an exciting and authentic musical experience © Marcus Ebener

Completed to coincide with the Kronberg Academy’s thirtieth anniversary this year, the 600-seat Casals Forum is the work of Staab Architkten and Peutz acousticians, and part of a brand-new €70m purpose-built teaching and performance complex also consisting of an educationally game-changing study centre with five tuition rooms, four practice rooms, offices, common areas, a 50-capacity recital room, and the 150-seat, shoe-box-design Carl Bechstein Hall. The Casals Forum itself represents around two thirds of that €70m – of which €25m came from private sources, and the rest from federal and local government – and from a public perspective sits as the project’s crown jewel. As for its conception, the Academy’s proposed list of characteristics was, on the one hand, nothing out of the ordinary: a space that would visually welcome outsiders in, allow a good view of the stage from every seat, and bring a warm, non-clinical, high-definition and well-balanced sound to everything from a solo violin partita through to a symphony, wherever you are in the auditorium. Highly unusual, though, was the Academy’s insistence that architect and acoustician work together from the very beginning, rather than the more common scenario whereby the building is conceived first, and the acoustician brought in later.

Six concave corners offer views out to nearby Victoria Park, and into the auditorium itself © Marcus Ebener

Design-wise, this early marriage has produced an unprecedented, transparent-walled, non-symmetrical oblong-ish creation of wave-like convex walls and six concave corners which offer inside-out views onto nearby Victoria Park, and outside-in views into both the communal areas encircling the auditorium, and down into the high-walled, high-ceilinged auditorium itself – a daylight-flooded, 5,500m³ space fashioned in smooth, light wood. The seating draws on both shoebox and amphitheatre configurations to marry closeness to the stage with enough surfaces for sound waves to bounce off. The acoustical picture is then completed by high walls lined with panels, tiltable to 180°, that can be altered to either absorb or reflect sound.

Augustin Hadelich’s violin heard from the very back of the hall sounded as immediate as if I were sat at his feet © Andreas Malkmus

The result in audience terms is a hall in which there is literally no bad seat. Wherever you are, you feel physically close to the stage, with a clear view. Acoustically, the impression I gained over three festival concerts in three different parts of the hall was the consistency of intimacy, detail, definition and perfect balance. Augustin Hadelich’s violin heard from the very back sounded as immediate as if I were sat at his feet, both in Haydn’s C major Violin Concerto and his solo encore; yet the COE – the hall’s first orchestra-in-residence – was also able to punch out a Beethoven fortissimo without my ears feeling knocked sideways. Every inner piece of scoring in Schumann’s Violin Concerto with Christian Tetzlaff was as crisply audible and perfectly balanced as the Mozart string quintet led by Pinchas Zuckerman. All the above rises from and disappears into a true, perfect silence thanks to technical detailing such as a renewable energy air conditioning system pushing the air slowly enough to create no sound. Add all the curved, light wood, and the whole experience felt like being sat inside a top-of-the-range, high-definition speaker.

‘It was very hard’, smiles Academy founder and director Raimund Trenkler of the venue’s journey from conception to completion. ‘There was one moment when both the architect and the acoustician said to me separately, “I can’t work with this guy. I’ve never been in a situation where someone is always telling me that I’m wrong and that I have to change something.”’ Yet the fruits speak for themselves. Plus, not only are Kronberg Festival concerts now routinely sold out, but audiences are suddenly coming from Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Switzerland and even Tokyo.

Christian Tetzlaff's performance of Schumann’s Violin Concerto was crisply audible and perfectly balanced © Andreas Malkmus

Still, it’s also likely to be no accident that the Casals Forum has hit the acoustical sweet spot with a completeness that none of Europe’s recent headline-grabbing symphonic halls have entirely managed, with a seating capacity that is half to a quarter of what theirs is. And, while its stage can happily accommodate a chamber orchestra and instrumental soloist, it couldn’t fit a Mahler-sized orchestra. That said, its price tag was a fraction of both the Elbphilharmonie’s €866m and the projected £288m for London’s aborted Centre for Music, and its physical footprint a mere 760m² – all for a musical experience that isn’t just more exciting, but for the majority of the historical canon, more authentic. ‘Even Brahms symphonies were written for halls of between 300 and 600 people’ points out Trenkler. ‘They never had a 2,000-seat hall in mind. So, better to make one concert twice, and bring it back to the intimate setting these pieces were written for.’ It’s also visually stunning, inside and out.

Essentially, the Casals Forum shows what can be created when you shelve quantity but go for quality. Which is a brave and luxurious thing to be able to do, but consideration-worthy for anyone still pursuing an exciting concert hall when both money and land are in short supply.