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Back to the Royal Festival Hall
The Philharmonia Orchestra returns to the Royal Festival Hall in September following two seasons next door in the Queen Elizabeth Hall whilst the Royal Festival hall was completely refurbished.
The painstaking renovation programme involved removing every part of the hall and then re-fitting everything, with some subtle improvements for a 21st century audience.
For example the seats are the original ones from 1951, re-upholstered and repaired, but have been put back in the hall with significantly more legroom!
We asked Gillian Moore, head of Contemporary culture at Southbank Centre about some of the changes. 'If you come in to the Royal Festival Hall you might think "I wonder what all the fuss is about!" because so much has not changed! But that's because the Royal Festival Hall is a Grade 1 listed building.
What we have been able to do in the foyers is make them much more transparent and restore all the space. A lot of the shops have gone from the foyers and a lot of office spaces have gone so you have 35% more public space.'
But the key change to the hall has been in the acoustic, which had been seen as the big problem. The acoustician Larry Kirkegaard has worked for two years to make the hall more resonant. When the hall was built in 1951 the acousticians of the time felt the hall would be too resonant, so filled the hall with absorbent materials - some of this has now gone and new acoustic screens have been installed above the stage to 'bounce' the sound back down from the ceiling to the audience and orchestra.
