After seven years, long delays, cost overruns and missed deadlines, today still has a vision with missing sections in the metallic exterior. The hall (the final cost will be around 386 million euros), dressed with 340,000 of interlocking gray, cream, pearl and ivory cast-aluminum birds on the wing. President François Hollande of France will inaugurate the hall, and the Orchestre de Paris will play the Requiem by the French composer Gabriel Fauré in a memorial tribute to victims of last week’s terrorist attacks here.
The Orchestre de Paris was previously based at the Salle Pleyel, a 1920s concert hall near the Arc de Triomphe, with easy access to the city’s more affluent neighborhoods and wealthy western suburbs. The challenge is also reach new generations in the suburbs, or banlieues, long scorned by the City of Light. The building is meant to win over younger, less affluent audiences to classical music. Pantin is a dense and diverse town of 50,000 residents and historically a home to waves of immigrants.
The lingering question about the Philharmonie is whether it can truly emerge as a temple of sound that brings egalité to classical music in the far northeast of Paris. The hall is on the edge of the Parc de la Villette, just inside the ring road that symbolizes the divide between the wealthy center of Paris and the working-class and poor suburbs outside of it. NYT
The northeast location has experienced some gentrification in recent years, and the Philharmonie will join a number of other cultural buildings and musical venues in a large park. Critics complain that the Philharmonie is difficult to reach by public transportation and expensive by taxi, although supporters counter that the subway trip from the city’s Gare du Nord train station to the hall takes only 11 minutes.
More information and full articles.- Concert-Hall Discord in Paris WSJ and A Concert Hall in Paris Aims to Bridge Divides NYT.
And the statement on Le Monde newspaper, by Jean Nouvel
