Inside Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, home to the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra. The building has been praised for its finely tuned acoustics that won accolades from the late conductor Herbert von Karajan, who attended the acoustics tests when it opened in 1986. It was this hall that launched the international career of acoustic specialist Yasuhisa Toyota. He’s behind some of the world’s most reputed concert halls and is known for his finesse in shaping sound so unobtrusively that all listeners hear is the music. Toyota’s talents are coveted as classical music venues are increasingly designed in “vineyard style,” where audiences surround the stage to hear the performers up close and can have an almost interactive experience.
“When we design concert hall acoustics, we design without using microphones or speakers. It is the live acoustic sound that is important. And when you talk about live acoustics, there are two important factors – the shape (of the concert hall), and its (construction) material, what sorts of materials you use,” says Toyota.
Toyota’s Nagata Acoustics has just 20 employees globally, but it dominates acoustics work for halls in Japan and is expanding abroad. He’s designed the acoustics for orchestras in Los Angeles, Helsinki, Paris and Shanghai. Another one of his projects, the Elbephilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, opened Jan. 11.
The 64 year-old is not a musician but was raised listening to and loving classical music. He founded his company in 1971 with headquarters in Tokyo and Los Angeles, which is his main home these days as he oversees Nagata’s projects outside Japan. The thickness of a wall, its shape, material and curves, the fixtures hanging from the ceiling, and the musicians themselves all affect the acoustics of a room. He says many factors are at work to fine-tune acoustics, and each hall has a different design, creating fresh challenges.
“Not only acoustic (design), but the design of appearance – these must both be taken into consideration. So it’s not just us who design (the sound) but it’s a collaborative effort with the architects (of the hall). In that sense, there are difficult aspects but at the same time it is also what makes it fascinating.”
He says in the old-style shoebox design of concert halls, where the audience sits in rows facing the stage, the sound is easier to control. The vineyard format is more difficult and delicate. Japan’s love for classical music and Toyota’s talent were evident at a recent Japan Philharmonic Orchestra performance at Suntory Hall of Bruckner’s “Symphony No. 8 in C minor.” The chief conductor Pietari Inkinen says: “I think Suntory Hall is the hall that comes close to perfection that you can really play any repertoire here and it works very well. It has this really luxurious echo but also enough space for the really big loud repertoire, so it is one of the highlights for us to be playing in.”
Flute player Keiko Manabe agrees: “Here at the Suntory Hall, the sounds of all different instruments from all different places come across to me very clearly, so it’s a hall that makes it easy for me to play in an ensemble.”
Toyota says crafting acoustics requires a thorough knowledge of building materials, close collaboration with architects, comprehension of musicians’ needs, computerized simulations, use of scale models of the halls, and the analysis of reverberating sound.
Apart from the just opened Elbephilharmonie, Toyota has done the acoustics for Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall, Helzberg Hall at Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Chamber Hall at the Museo Del Violino in Cremona, Italy. His first major overseas project was the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which opened in 2003, for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
The executive director of Suntory Hall Tetsuo Ichimoto says Toyota was ahead of his time when he designed Suntory.
“The hall was constructed with the most advanced technology of the time, and because of that, Suntory Hall has come to be recognized as one of the world’s leading halls. I’m very glad that we had asked Mr. Toyota to design the hall back then.”
Toyota and architect Frank Gehry donated their work to build a hall, opening in March, for Berlin’s Barenboim-Said Akademie, which was founded by conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim and the American-Palestinian scholar Edward W. Said to educate and bring together young musicians, including Arabs and Israelis.
(AP)
