Culture can be ruined by austerity measures, as Berlin is currently demonstrating. A visionless senator for culture is scrambling to fulfill the state government’s austerity plans, failing to develop any real concepts that could serve both the strained budget and the citizens. Culture can also be robbed of its soul, as some parties would like, by keeping it on a tight ideological leash, which is the opposite of creativity and inventiveness.
Another way of managing culture is giving it a solid financial and spatial basis so that it may flourish and bear wonderful fruit. This is what happened in Spain when a national plan was established to build urgently needed concert halls throughout the large country to ensure that that the populations basic musical needs would be satisfied. And indeed, the plan worked: for some time now, more and more highly trained young Spanish musicians have been coming to Germany and winning auditions for orchestras. The national and regional youth orchestras amaze with their impressive quality, and on my recent concert tour across Spain, I saw significantly fewer gray hairs in the sold-out halls than here in Germany. The Madrid hall of this plan is the Auditorio Nacional de Música, opened in 1988, a complex that houses three halls of different sizes.
Like so many modern concert halls, the Great Hall is modeled on the vineyard principle of the Berlin Philharmonic, without appearing so playful. The imposing hall seats 2,324 spectators, who can hear astonishingly well from almost anywhere. The action always seems reasonably “close,” even though the distances in such a hall are inevitably considerable. In terms of sound, the auditorium strikes a wonderful balance between clarity and warmth, between the Elbphilharmonie and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam.
For us musicians, this hall is much less dazzling at first glance. Through a small door at the back, after passing through security and walking down a few long corridors, you find the windowless cloakrooms, which could just as easily be found in any stadium or gymnasium. Of course, we don’t need luxury, but a tailcoat or evening gown requires more space and storage options than sports pants. Well, once we’ve put on our concert attire and stowed away our everyday clothes, we head for the stage, and just before we get there, we are reconciled: Directly behind the stage (actually under the choir seats), we can enjoy fabulous catering in a canteen that is more like a tapas bar. Wow, I could get used to this!
A short flight of stairs leads to the podium, where you quickly feel very comfortable. Both your colleagues and your own instrument are easily audible, so achieving a clean balance is a breeze. In addition, the hall provides a first-class echo, which you can use to mix the sound.
And after the concert? Well, the Auditorio Nacional isn’t located in the best area of Madrid, but we had no trouble finding several first-class tapas bars.