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Aug. 21--It's a rare classical event in South Florida when the audience is more elegantly dressed than the symphony musicians seated onstage.
But Sunday morning's open rehearsal by the Cleveland Orchestra at the new Knight Concert Hall was far from your typical pre-concert run-through. Indeed, this first public event at the $450million Carnival Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Miami was freighted with massive significance for the region's cultural landscape.
The Carnival Center, which will open in October, boasts not one but two state-of-the-art performance venues: the Ziff Ballet Opera House, which will be home to Florida Grand Opera and Miami City Ballet, and the Knight Concert Hall, which will host the Concert Association of Florida, as well as a variety of pop, jazz and world music.
In many ways, Sunday's rehearsal was about much more than the event itself, a fundraiser for the Carnival Center at $250 a ticket. It also provided a sneak preview of the Cleveland Orchestra's 10-year residency, scheduled to begin in January, and an opportunity for acousticians to test the hall with a first-class orchestra and actual bodies in the seats.
But most importantly, it was the first opportunity for South Florida concertgoers to enter the $450 million building, designed by architect Cesar Pelli, and hear live music performed in one of the gleaming new venues.
The response from audience members was uniformly enthusiastic. "Fabulous," said Kathryn Carroll, a regular at concerts. "I think the hall sounds excellent."
Caroline Mitchell, a violist, said she liked the hall's reverberation. "I'm a musician and singer, so I was really interested," she said. "The sound was great. I enjoyed it tremendously."
Gary Hanson, executive director of the Cleveland Orchestra, said he thought "all the fundamentals are right" with the hall's sound.
"The most important thing is the size and shape of the room, and they got that exactly right," Hanson said.
Conductor Franz Welser-Möst also expressed satisfaction with the initial results.
"In a lot of halls you can't get that warm string sound," the Austrian conductor said. "I would say that is already there. It's really, really a good hall, and it has all the potential to become a great hall."
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Copyright (c) 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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