Architecture review: The Tobin Center – In new stage for arts, design runs deep

Winspear Opera House is Meyerson’s next-door neighbor

Meyerson Symphony Center

McDermott Concert Hall in the Meyerson Symphony Center

The Meyerson Symphony Center’s lobbies can seem underpopulated.

incident light

music

How did the hall sound?  In a word,voluptuous.            

The Meyerson at 25 That touch of mink October 5, 2014 DALLAS — Three exceptional artists inhabited the stage at the Meyerson Symphony Center’s McDermott Concert Hall for a Dallas Symphony concert on Oct. 3. One of them was not visible, and not listed on the program, but make no mistake: He was there.  Present in the usual sense were the pianist Emanuel Ax, fluid and effortless and musical as ever in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 14 in E-flat, K. 449; and the Dallas Symphony’s music director, Jaap van Zweden, who led a taut and compelling performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s epic Symphony No. 8.  The main purpose of my trip, however, was to hear thework of that third exceptional artist — Russell Johnson, the acoustician who shaped the McDermott Concert Hall into one of the great music rooms of the world.  Opened in 1989, this hall was the first of a string of triumphs forJohnson’s firm, Artec. He died in 2007.  I had experienced the hall only twice before, at the 1989 opening and again in 1994. The 25th anniversary season seemed an appropriate occasion for a return visit, but there was another reason, as well: I wanted to have the sound of a great concert hall fresh in my ears as a reference standard against which to judge the acoustics of the H-E-B Performance Hall in San Antonio’s new opened Tobin Center for the Performing Arts. (Click on link at left.)   “A reference standard” — not necessarily “the reference standard.” Concert halls can be good (or bad) in different ways. The Meyerson is a superb hall of a particular type. As Johnson himself has acknowledged, no hall can do equal justice to every part of the symphonic repertoire — and the H-E-B Performance Hall also has to work for opera, ballet and amplified popular music.  Johnson designed a good deal of acoustical flexibility into McDermott. Four reflector panels above the concert platform can be raised or lowered to adjust the sound to the needs of large or small ensembles.  Panels at the rear of the concert platform can be opened or closed to reduce or increase the reflected energy. Most important, concrete chambers just outside the concert room greatly increase its effective volume for reverberation while allowing the room itself to remain fairly narrow, concentrating the direct and reflected energy. (Adjustable louvers can vary the amount of added reverberation.) Before going farther, I should note that the Dallas Symphony is a much better orchestra than it was when the Meyerson opened. In 1989, the winds were in fine shape, but the strings sounded thin and scrappy. On Oct. 3, however, the strings played with remarkably luxurious fit and finish — a tribute in part to van Zweden’s leadership over the past eight years, but also, it is fair to assume, a tribute to the hall itself.   So how did the hall sound on reaquaintance? In a word, voluptuous.  Imagine drawing your fingers through thick, soft fur. While supping on sweetbreads drenched in butter and washed down with a decent vintage of Romanee-Conti Grands Echezeaux. Followed by whatever post-prandial sport on silken bedsheets the heart may prompt. On second thought, forget that last one … the sound of this concert hall is better than sex. In merely mortal music rooms, one sits over here and listens to the orchestra, over there. In the McDermott, the listener bathes in the sound of the orchestra. Sometimes the sound burrows inside the listener’s skull. It is an intensely visceral experience.  From my seat near the back of the main floor, the sound spread well beyond the concert platform to left and right, and above. The effect was a little disconcerting at first — the sound from the violins seemed to emanate from the side balconies on my left. It was an unusually open sound, and it remained open and uncongested even when the whole orchestra was playing at full force. (The ample headroom came in handy in particularly cataclysmic passages of the Shostakovich symphony.)   The sound was warm and favored the strings over the winds. The distinctive instrumental timbres of woodwinds and brass were not expressed as objectively as they seemed to be in the H-E-B Performance Hall, whose brighter acoustic seemed (on initial hearings) to push these instruments forward. The double-basses did not project fundamental tones as cleanly as the San Antonio hall seemed to do.  The McDermott Concert Hall’s luxurious resonance was a mixed blessing. The ruminative opening adagio of the Shostakovich sounded glorious in these surroundings, but the savage militarism of the third movement (delivered with tightly coiled energy by van Zweden) was somewhat undercut by the sheer beauty of the sonics. In the Mozart concerto, the strings sounded too sumptuous for the classical period.  But these are minor quibbles. As is the entirely reasonable fear that listening to music in the McDermott Concert Hall can become addictive.  As glorious as this hall sounds, however, its acoustical characteristics should not be considered necessarily normative for all concert halls, including the multipurpose H-E-B Performance Hall. There is much to be said for diversity — for halls that sound leaner and halls that sound fatter, for halls that sound brighter and those that sound darker, for the clarity of crystal and for that touch of mink. To repeat: Concert halls can be good (or bad) in different ways. The building that encloses the McDermott Concert Hall inspires less admiration than the hall itself. An elegant essay in geometric formalism by I.M. Pei, it is grand in scale and lavish in finishes. The vast marble-paved lobbies seem cold and underpopulated even with a full house. The dynamism of the lobbies’ variously oriented arcs is vitiated by the sheer size of the space. Despite its close address to the street, the building’s pristine abstraction seems standoffish and anti-urban, too much like a temple. Its transparency is welcome, affording nice views from the interior to the adjacent Winspear Opera House and (alas) to some of the more egregiously boring-while-trying-too-hard-to-seem-interesting skyscrapers of the post-1960s business district.  But the Meyerson’s architecture is a product of its time, when Dallas was more conservative in its tastes and its politics, and when much  of its downtown was as lively as a mausoleum. In that context,  the Meyerson’s uptight respectability was a reasonable defensive strategy.  The context is very different now. Downtown Dallas is the hub of one of the nation’s largest light-rail systems. One can’t walk 10 feet downtown without tripping over a couturier canine enleashed to a bright young thing newly resident in one of the thousands of apartments that have lately enlivened the pre-1960s commercial district. There are lots of good restaurants and public art and pocket parks — and more hotels than in the past, but not too many, as there are in downtown San Antonio.                 The Meyerson was the first of a cluster of venues that,                        together with the older Dallas Museum of Art and Nasher                      Sculpture Center, form the Dallas Arts District, a 19-block,                      68-acre swath of arts facilities and parks along the northern                      edge ofdowntown.                        The latest additions, and the most important architecturally,                      opened in 2009 as components of the AT&T Performing                          Arts Center: The Winspear Opera House, home of the                      increasingly adventurous Dallas Opera, is livelier and more                      gregarious in its architecture than the Meyerson. The 3-acre                      aluminum-louvered sunscreen that surrounds the building                      reduces solar load and allows the exterior walls to be fully                      glazed without busting the energy budget. The architects                       were Foster & Partners. The Wyly Theater, home of Dallas                     Theatre Center productions, is unusual for its vertical design and outboard elevators, allowing a highly flexible performance  space, rehearsal room, offices and front-of-house amenities to occupy a small footprint. The architects were REX/OMA (Joshua Prince-Ramus and Rem Koolhaas).  Also in the arts district are the Booker T. Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts, the Dallas Black Dance Theater, the Dallas City Performance Hall and a third component of the AT&T Performing Arts Center, Klyde Warren Park, built on space made available by roofing three blocks of the below-grade Woodall-Rogers Freeway. The Perot Museum of Nature and Science is considered part of the arts district, though physically separated from it by three blocks. This collection of arts facilities would be an ornament to any city in the world, and no doubt many benefits accrue from geographic proximity. But this concentration is, like the Meyerson’s architecture, a product of its time. The mode of thinking that undergirds the art district is rooted in the grand urban renewal schemes of the 1950s and 1960s.  It’s worth asking whether such concentrations are the best means for reviving or maintaining the social and economic value of urban centers. Dispersing arts venues around the urban core might be a better strategy. Despite the great strides downtown Dallas has made in recent years, some corners still need the cheer that arts venues can bring.  Mike Greenberg

(Today) one can’t walk 10 feet downtown without tripping over a couturier canine enleashed to a bright young thing.

The Meyerson’s architecture is a product of its time, when Dallas was more conservative in its tastes and its politics, and when much of its downtown was as lively as a mausoleum.

The Wyly Theatre

Lobby of the Winspear Opera House