The Concert Hall

The Concert Hall

The Concert Hall is the biggest of all the studios, and perhaps the most important architectural feature of the building; for which reason its design and decoration were retained in the hands of the architect. The hall is as large as the conditions of the site permitted, the floor dimensions being 106 feet by 42 feet, and it occupies three floors in depth, viz. the first, ground, and lower ground floors, giving a height of 31 feet. The hall is wedge-shaped owing to its lines following the external lines of the site. The splay is not sufficient to be realized at first sight, but it has the strange perspective effect of making the hall appear very much longer from the back than from the front, an advantage from the point of view of the audience. It was never anticipated that the hall could be made big enough to seat the full B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra of 114 players, which normally performs in the Queen’s Hall. The B.B.C. intended rather to use the hall for the smaller component orchestras, the largest of which, the ‘B’ Orchestra of 79 players, is not too big for the hall, and is able to play to the full audience of over 500 people. The volume of the hall is 125,000 cubic feet, which in the ordinary way would not be very big in relation to the numbers of the audience and performers, but the ventilating system, described more fully below, works so admirably that the usual effect of hot stale air is entirely absent. In the opinion of Professor Reilly:

This Hall is the finest thing in the building. It is strongly modelled with great bracketed beams to break up the sound. Without reliance on traditional forms, it yet has great scale and power. There is, indeed, something Cyclopean about it which provides a suitably serious air, and at once separates it from the ordinary run of frivolous apartments in which English people are, as a rule, compelled to listen to music. Yet, with all this, it does not lack interest. That is given largely by the lighting, the tapering shape, and the heavy crouching balcony. Altogether, it is such a Hall as Piranesi might have designed had he dreamed of such instead of prisons.

1932 // THIS IS TRANSDIFFUSION