Bold developments have transformed Oslo’s waterfront in recent years, but a new concert hall would be a welcome addition, says David Nice
MUSICAL DESTINATIONS
When I first visited Oslo in 2014, Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta’s Opera House was the big vision of the city, both outside and in. It still is. But where the rest of the harbour on the Oslo fjord was one vast building site back then, there are now rival attractions: the Munch Museum round the corner, marketed as MUNCH and opened in 2021, the Oslo Public Library (2020) and the National Museum (not quite open on my most recent trip, but now very much up and running). What remains an urgent priority to join them is, surely, a brand-new waterside concert hall.
My main destination earlier this year was the concert hall the Oslo Philharmonic already has – seemingly doomed to poor acoustics when it opened in 1977, as it had to be built on a triangular site. Mariss Jansons resigned in 2000 as the orchestra’s chief conductor over wrangles about the venue with the City Council. But what you hear depends on where you sit and for me, the results of the Oslo Phil’s concert with new music director Klaus Mäkelä were never less than spectacular – those feral strings in Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin Suite had every right to be compared with their counterparts in Berlin. The situation begs comparison with Philadelphia, where that distinctive sound nurtured by Stokowski and Ormandy meant fighting a dead venue.
The orchestra’s naturally charming and inspiring general director Ingrid Røynesdal will get her way if anyone can: in an oil-rich country where the arts are government-funded to an astonishing degree, new venues have been springing up everywhere. Stavanger, for instance, has a very fine concert hall; the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, most innovative programmer of its kind under Terje Tønnesen and likely to continue as such under his successor Pekka Kuusisto, has the smartest headquarters and concert space (the Oslo Phil’s offices are state-of-the-art too). It also uses a dazzling venue fit for its size, (though too small for the Oslo Phil): the University Aula, where what you hear is complemented by what you see – Munch’s sensational sunburst on the back wall.
Cultural riches in Oslo seem infinite. On one visit, I took the Opera House premiere of a new opera based on Ibsen’s Peer Gynt by Estonian Jüri Reinvere as a chance to also see a stunning production of the play at the
