Review Roundup: David Geffen Hall Opens at Lincoln Center

The new David Geffen Hall opened to the public on October 8, 2022, the home of the New York Philharmonic and new welcoming cultural home for New York. Completed two years early with a transformative design by Diamond Schmitt Architects and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the project represents a statement of faith in New York and its artistic community, while delivering jobs and economic development at a crucial time for the city's rebound.

The design team consisted of Diamond Schmitt Architects, led by Gary McCluskie, on the Wu Tsai Theater; Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects │ Partners, led by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, on all of the public spaces; acoustician Paul Scarbrough of Akustiks; and theater planner Joshua Dachs of Fisher Dachs Associates. The firms Kohler Ronan and Thornton Tomasetti provided engineering services.

Thousands of workers at Turner Construction Company--sometimes nearly 700 people at a time in the hall--worked around the clock through the pandemic to make this vision a reality.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

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Zachary Woolfe, New York Times: Geffen sounds clear, clean and straightforward; there's nothing distorted or echoing, no weird balances or flabby resonances. But that cleanness can sometimes seem like coolness: an objective, almost clinical feeling, matched by the hard white light glaring on the orchestra. (Compare it with Carnegie Hall, in every respect a golden bubble bath.)

Michael J. Lewis, Wall Street Journal: Upstairs, on the main level, the vista is dazzling, a clear sweep across the front of the building, forming a spacious lobby that pours outside onto the broad loggia. Here is Williams/Tsien's characteristic sensitivity to color and surface texture, the palette of deep blue and gold reprising that of the original building. Large orange flower petals decorate the wall leading to the auditorium, continuing inside on the fabric of the seats. It is a felicitous metaphor for music, rose petals falling gently from above, and is derived from the Roman custom of dropping rose petals into the oculus of the Pantheon on Pentecost Sunday. The motif continues on the seats-and, from front to back, the blue of the fabric is increasingly given over to the orange petals, as if they were being blown outward by the gentle force of music.

George Grella, Financial Times: In many ways this was a spectacular performance. Pace and spirit were excellent, dynamics were smooth and broad, colours were exceptional. The climax was enormous without distortion. This was volume without presence, though, the sound seemingly behind glass and not reaching the listener with immediacy. Reverberation was transparent but short. This was one of many concerts planned; expect the orchestra to grow into its new home.

Justin Davidson, Vulture: I'm not ready to declare the hall a flop or a triumph. Acoustics are not a separate entity from the music that gets played there, which in this performance included a panoply of archival recordings, record scratches, rumbly interviews, and a whole arsenal of percussion. Sitting beneath a giant film screen where ghostly images of the vanished neighborhood merged with more recent photos, the Philharmonic seemed like the hired band at its own party, most often relegated to the status of rhythm section or fat-sound filler and only occasionally stepping into the limelight. The orchestra's Olympian brass players got a workout, at least, and they seemed to enjoy the action so much that they sometimes sounded alarmingly intense. The strings sawed away and still wound up sounding uncharacteristically timid.

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