5 years Elbphilharmonie – landmark, magnificent building – and top address in the classical music scene – culture

Construction delays, skyrocketing costs, poor acoustics – the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie initially got all the negative headlines. It has now been in existence for five years, and 380 concerts a year take place in the large hall alone. The Elphi, as the people of Hamburg affectionately call it, is a magnet for visitors.

But does she also have the artistic reputation that one had hoped for from her? The Hamburg music editor Joachim Mischke says: Today the Elbphilharmonie is one of the best of the best.


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Joachim Mischke is music editor at the Hamburger Abendblatt and his book “Stories and Secrets of the Elbphilharmonie” has just been published by Hoffmann&Campe.

SRF: What is your association with the Elbphilharmonie: “splendid building”, “classical concert hall” or “landmark of the city”?

Joachim Mischke: Magnificent building, possibly because it wasn’t exactly cheap, to put it mildly. It’s not a classical concert hall, but rather a concert hall for classical music and many other things. It is a mixture of a state-of-the-art concert hall and a landmark.

Many raved about the unique acoustics. Then the seemingly impossible happened: the soloist Jonas Kaufmann performed, but the audience in the hall did not hear him. What happened?

That was an evening on which a lot went wrong, but the hall itself can do relatively little. Kaufmann sang Mahler’s “Lied von der Erde” and stood in the wrong place in the hall. You could have known that and changed it – but he didn’t want to. In addition, the Basel Orchestra has not dealt with this hall ideally.

The audience was correspondingly angry because they heard a lot of orchestra and little Jonas Kaufmann. Only eleven days later, the Munich Philharmonic performed with Valery Gergiev: he was in the right place, the orchestra was very familiar with Toyota acoustics – and everything was wonderful.

Did this event damage the reputation of the Elbphilharmonie?

I do not believe that. There was a lot of excitement for a short time. The concert is mentioned again and again because many things went so spectacularly wrong. But there have been 2600 concerts in the meantime, most of which have been accident-free in this respect.

Elbphilharmonie: the most important stations


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  • 2001: The idea of ​​a new concert hall is launched
  • 2003: Herzog & de Meuron present the first draft for a «Hamburg Philharmonic»
  • 2010: First discord and protests
  • 2011: The desired triumph of modern architecture threatens to become a fiasco
  • 2017: Hamburg opens the Elbphilharmonie after a 7-year delay

Which concert experience do you particularly remember?

As this hall is good for large orchestral repertoire works, I would say Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony with Teodor Currentzis. The list of great concerts – Yo-Yo Ma, the Berlin Philharmonic with Kirill Petrenko, Concertgebouw with Klaus Mäkelä – ranges from a small cast to a large symphony.

Legend:

Sound design in a class of its own: Thanks to the acoustics by Yasuhisa Toyota, the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie is one of the best concert halls in the world.

IMAGO / epd

Around three million people have visited the Elbphilharmonie so far. Many come for the experience and want to marvel at the architecture. Do you accept the so-called “hall tourists” with approval?

That’s another urban myth, because there aren’t that many. There are tourism packages: tour operators who put their busload in the hall. But all in all, that’s about five percent of the visitors.

The vast majority of visitors come from Hamburg and the region, others come from all over the world.

Is the Elbphilharmonie now the top address on the classical music scene?

She’s already way up. It plays in a league with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw, the Musikverein in Vienna and the KKL in Lucerne. So the plan worked.

Katrin Becker conducted the interview.

Book reference


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Joachim Mischke: “Stories and Secrets of the Elbphilharmonie”. Hoffmann & Campe, 2021.

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