My Visual Culture professor, Jan, said in class that the Berliner Philharmonie was designed from the inside, out, as though a stone had been dropped into water sending ripples expanding outwards.
I had visited the Kulturforem for the first time when it was raining, walking around the façadeless Philharmonie, noting its overlapping planes and irregular masses. But it wasn't until I visited the Philharmonie for a second time, this time to see a recital, that I understood exactly what Jan meant.
I took myself on a Thursday-night date to see Daniil Trifonov play Beethoven's Andante für Klavier in F Minor, Schumann's Bunte Blätter, and Prokofiev's Klaviersonate in B Minor. It was raining this time too, and the magnificent Deutsche Bahn tower and SONY center at Potsdamerplatz sparkled like colorful faux-gemstones against the dark misty sky. In the distance, in contrast, the peaks of the Philharmonie glowed with a soft golden light.
As I was over an hour early, I ordered an Apfelshorle and hung out on the ground floor while the space gradually filled with people. I wandered up and down the tangle of staircases and watched people ordering pretzels and wine from the concessions areas. In places, long white piers extend at angles through the middle of a stairway, or cut across the lobby space. Jutting between the irregular, intertwining levels of stairways and slanting masses of the ceiling, these piers gave me the impression of the long fibers of muscles stretched between white bone, as though we were walking through the chest cavity of some strange animal.
Around 7:30, the reception area began to empty out, and I began my climb up through the network of stairways to find my seat.
I'm almost glad that I couldn't afford a better seat, because from my perch in the highest level of the orchestra hall, I had an almost bird's-eye view of the space. It was at some point during the first Beethoven piece that I was suddenly struck with an understanding of what Jan meant about the stone dropped in water, which was suddenly so clear to me I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it already.
The piano is the stone. From its placement towards the front of the lower stage, the pattern of the floorboards emanates out 360 degrees around it, skipping to climb the orchestra risers. The risers form half-rings, the initial, dense ripples closest to the place where the stone disrupts the surface. And then, as the ripples expand, they grow distorted, wider. The tight rings of the stage risers give way to disjointed rows of seating, and the architecture grows more and more irregular until eventually it reaches the broad forms and wide curves on the exterior of the building, where the original ripples patterns are now indistinguishable. Even the acoustic panels hanging from the ceiling, and the convex curve of the ceiling itself, seem to be pushed upward by the sound.
Just as the architecture emanates from the place where the pianist's fingers meet the keys, so too do the sound and the light. The pool of golden light around the piano diffuses to the edges of the stage and glazes the white slabs supporting the rows of seats with soft light. High notes rise to the ceiling like sparks, and the low notes sink like the light to the floor. In the brilliant acoustic architecture of the space, this separation is so visceral I could almost see it.
I pulled my focus back to the music as the pianist moved into Bunte Blätter. Even from so far away, the pianist's movements were expressive. In the more technically intense parts, he leaned forward with precise control. But in other, moodier, more dramatic parts, it seemed more like was struggling against the piano, fighting to maintain control. Certain chords pushed him back with sudden jerks, lifted his feet from the floor. He leaned in, and piano and pianist seemed to growl at one another, teeth bared, until with a burst of colorful sound he straightened up, in control once more. The music swelled, flourished, and with the sound of the final gentle chords the instrument at last released him. He stumbled to his feet, bowed unsteadily.
The concert hall is cavernous, as though it has been dug from raw Earth. The jagged polygonal masses of seating are the broken walls of clay, and the seats are the rough sepia soil, the dark heads filling them are patches of grass. This grass remained motionless as the music fills the space, but when the pianist played the final notes and sprung to his feet, it was as though a wind set the grasses alive with movement, hundreds of hands shivering in a great mass of applause. After he finished Prokofiev, he had to come out seven times to bow and played two encore pieces, of which I wish I knew the names.
It's not hard to believe that the incredible music performed in the Philharmonie is intensified and enhanced by the architecture, which lends not only acoustic but also spatial and visual dynamism to the sound.
With this blog post I've included several sketches and diagrams that attempt to explain some of the ways that the Philharmonie works as a dynamic space with light, abstract mass, sound, and time.
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