Glasgow International Concert Hall | |
Address | 2 Sauchiehall Street G2 3NY |
---|---|
Location | Glasgow, Scotland, UK |
Coordinates | 55°51′52″N4°15′11″W / 55.864503°N 4.252921°W |
Owner | Glasgow City Council |
Operator | Glasgow’s Concert Halls |
Type | Concert hall |
Capacity | 2,475 (Main Auditorium) 500 (Strathclyde Suite) 300 (Lomond Foyer) 300 (Clyde Foyer) 300 (Exhibition Hall) 120 (Buchanan Suite) |
Construction | |
Opened | 1990 |
Years active | 1990–present |
Architect | Sir Leslie Martin |
Website | |
www |
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall is a concert and arts venue located in Glasgow, Scotland. It is owned by Glasgow City Council and operated by Glasgow Life, an agency of Glasgow City Council, which also runs Glasgow's City Halls and Old Fruitmarket venue.
Built as the Glasgow International Concert Hall, the Royal Concert Hall is one of the largest halls in the United Kingdom. [1] [2] It was granted Royal status shortly before it was officially opened on 5 October 1990 at a gala performance attended by Anne, Princess Royal. [3] [4]
It is the replacement for the acclaimed St. Andrew's Hall, adjacent to the Mitchell Library, which had been destroyed by fire in 1962, and was promoted and constructed in time for the city being recognised in the 1980s as the European City of Culture. The Concert Hall stands at the junction of Buchanan Street, Sauchiehall Street and the former Parliamentary Road, which the building stands partially atop. The entire complex, which includes the adjoining Buchanan Galleries shopping mall which was constructed in the late 1990s – was built over a former residential area which was demolished as part of the "comprehensive development" of Townhead and Cowcaddens in the 1960s.
The building incorporates a performers` entrance in West Nile Street, and public entrances in Buchanan street and in Killermont Street, with the RSNO Centre added in later years. The auditorium area is insulated by a massive rubber membrane built into the floor – damping out noise and vibration from the Subway tracks which run underneath.
The Glasgow International Concert Hall was officially opened on 5 October 1990, by Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra (then the Scottish National Orchestra) gave the very first performance at the Royal Gala Opening Concert, [5] as a showpiece for Glasgow being awarded the European City of Culture. [4] The programme featured two new works by Scottish composers, Carillon by Thomas Wilson and Rainbow 90 by Thea Musgrave, both specially commissioned for the occasion by Glasgow City Council, as well as pieces by Beethoven and Vaughan Williams. On the day prior, public concerts were given by the Band of Her Majesty's Royal Marines, with proceeds being donated to the RNLI, which also demonstrated how the stage and the floor levels can be changed to suit performances. The first non-classical concert was by The Blue Nile. The hall has been granted Royal Status and renamed Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. [4]
The building was designed by modernist architect Sir Leslie Martin of South Bank, London, with some of the conceptual ideas for the building dating as far back as the mid 1960s. Some of the basic thinking behind the scheme had been directly influenced by the Bruce Report, which had proposed dividing the city centre up into distinct zones for various types of activity once slum housing had been cleared. In 1964, Glasgow Corporation had already envisioned a new civic square which would be created following the planned closure and demolition of Buchanan Street railway station (which by this time had been decided as part of the Beeching Cuts). The new square would effectively be a superblock created by realigning Parliamentary Road to an approximate east-west axis (making it essentially an extension of Renfrew Street), and also realigning North Hanover Street so it ran directly north-south. Conceptual drawings from the period showed that the square would have looked very similar to Lincoln Center in New York City, containing an art gallery, civic theatre, concert hall and repertory theatre [6] .
With Leslie Martin appointed as project architect, later plans showed that the proposed new technical college along the north side of the site on Cowcaddens Road would occupy part of the site - this would eventually be built as Glasgow College of Technology (now Glasgow Caledonian University) in 1971. By 1968, the scheme had been revised further and scaled down considerably. A decision to close and consolidate two bus stations (Dundas Street and Killermont Street) into one, resulted in the newly created superblock being used for what would become Buchanan Bus Station in 1976, and the new "civic centre" would move to what would become the ultimate site of the Concert Hall. A multi-story car park was erected on the site of the former railway station building that same year. Even as far back as the late 1960s, Leslie Martin's initial concepts showed familiar aspects of the building that would be recognised today - the extensive use of colonnades (which would only be ultimately used on the north entrance of the building), and the cylindrical shaped entrance on its south facing side, which would be centred on the former intersection of Sauchiehall Street and Parliamentary Road. By the mid 1970s, the first ideas that the eastern edge of the site would be devoted to shops began to appear, but it was not until the 1980s that this began to develop into plans for the giant shopping mall that was eventually built. In 1988, the retailer John Lewis & Partners had signed up as the anchor tenant of the proposed development [7] The "Buchanan Centre" as it was initially called - would adjoin onto the side of the concert hall and John Lewis would occupy half of the mall's planned area, although it would be 1999 before it was finally realised - as the "Buchanan Galleries".
The Edinburgh-based company RMJM and partners were appointed as project architects for the Royal Concert Hall in 1988. Councillor Pat Lally symbolically drove in the first concrete pile of the building in the April of that year.
The Main Auditorium is the largest performance space in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, [8] and can seat 2475 people. Other spaces in the hall include the 500 capacity Strathclyde Suite, [9] the 300 capacity Exhibition Hall, the 120 capacity Buchanan Suite, the 300 capacity Lomond and Clyde foyers, the 100 capacity Strathclyde Bar, 150 capacity City of Music Studio and the 40 capacity VIP Room. The hall also has a gift shop, five bars and café. It also houses the headquarters of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
The Green Room, formerly a fine-dining room, was restyled in 2009 and renamed "The City of Music Studio" to celebrate Glasgow's UNESCO City of Music status. The City of Music Studio is known for the view overlooking Buchanan Street and its late night jazz programme.[ citation needed ] The Cafe Bar was re-branded and refurbished in 2011 as Café Encore following Encore's takeover of the catering department.
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra recently moved to a purpose-built new home on-site, entered from Killermont Street. At the heart of their new home is an acoustically adjustable, 600-seat auditorium, providing also world-class rehearsal and recording facilities for the Orchestra. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra Centre also houses a dedicated education space, the Robertson Learning and Engagement Centre.
A bespoke four manual Copeman Hart digital organ and associated speakers was permanently installed in the Hall in July 2015.
The Hall is the Glasgow performance base of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and has hosted many international orchestras, soloists and conductors, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Youth Orchestras of Britain and Scotland, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Celia Bartoli, Julian Lloyd Webber and Maxim Vengerov.
As well as classical music, the hall plays host to opera and ballet, musical theatre, talks, rock and pop, folk, world and country, swing and comedy. It also exhibits art and photographic exhibitions, and is the venue for graduation ceremonies for the adjacent Glasgow Caledonian University.
On Sunday 9 October 1993, Nelson Mandela chose Glasgow as the place to formally receive the first of his freedoms of nine British cities. He entered the Hall to a choral rendition of Down by the Riverside and received a standing ovation. In 1994 Bob Hope took to the stage to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
The Hall is the main venue for the annual Celtic Connections Festival, [10] [11] and is one of the venues for the city's Aye Write Book Festival.
Buchanan Street is one of the main shopping thoroughfares in Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland. It forms the central stretch of Glasgow's famous shopping district with a generally more upmarket range of shops than the neighbouring streets: Argyle Street, and Sauchiehall Street.
Cowcaddens is an area of the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It sits directly north of the city centre and is bordered by the newer area of Garnethill to the south-west and Townhead to the east.
Garnethill is a predominantly residential area of the city of Glasgow, Scotland with a number of important public buildings.
The Pavilion Theatre is a theatre in Glasgow located on Renfield Street.
The Kelvin Hall, located on Argyle Street in the Yorkhill area of Glasgow, Scotland, is one of the largest exhibition centres in Britain and now a mixed-use arts and sports venue that opened as an exhibition venue in 1927. It has also been used as a concert hall, home to the Kelvin Hall International Sports Arena to 2014, and from 1988 to 2010, Glasgow's Museum of Transport. As part of the economic redevelopment of Greater Glasgow promoted by the Scottish Development Agency and local authorities to enhance the city's tourist infrastructure and to attract further national and international conferences, the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre was designed as the Hall's successor for exhibitions and entertainments, built in 1983 and opened on the nearby Queen's Dock in 1985 with an exhibition area equal in size to the Kelvin Hall but with the benefit of extensive car parks and land for other complementary buildings. The Hall is protected as a category B listed building, and is served by city bus services and by Kelvinhall subway station.
Glasgow's City Halls and Old Fruitmarket is a concert hall and former market located on Candleriggs, in the Merchant City, Glasgow, Scotland.
The Theatre Royal is the oldest theatre in Glasgow and the longest running in Scotland. Located at 282 Hope Street, its front door was originally round the corner in Cowcaddens Street. It currently accommodates 1,541 people and is owned by Scottish Opera. The theatre opened in 1867, adopting the name Theatre Royal two years later. It is also the birthplace of Howard & Wyndham Ltd, owners and managers of theatres in Scotland and England until the 1970s, created by its chairman Baillie Michael Simons in 1895. It was Simons who as a cultural entrepreneur of his day also promoted the building of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and Glasgow's International Exhibitions of 1888 and 1901.
Candleriggs is a street in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It is located in the Merchant City area of the city centre.
Blythswood Hill, crowned by Blythswood Square, is an area of central Glasgow, Scotland. Its grid of streets extend from the length of the west side of Buchanan Street to Gordon Street and Bothwell Street, and to Charing Cross, Sauchiehall Street and Garnethill. Developed from 1800 onwards, its Georgian and Victorian architecture is a Conservation Area. It started as the "Magnificent New Town of Blythswood", becoming a part of the city-centre's business and social life.
Sauchiehall Street is one of the main shopping streets in the city centre of Glasgow, Scotland, along with Buchanan Street and Argyle Street.
The Willow Tearooms are tearooms at 217 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, Scotland, designed by internationally renowned architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which opened for business in October 1903. They quickly gained enormous popularity, and are the most famous of the many Glasgow tearooms that opened in the late 19th and early 20th century. The building was fully restored, largely to Mackintosh's original designs, between 2014 and 2018. It was re-opened as working tearooms in July 2018 and trades under the name "Mackintosh at The Willow". This follows a trademark dispute with the former operator of The Willow Tearooms which was resolved in 2017. That name is now used at tearoom premises in Buchanan Street and was additionally used at the Watt Brothers Department Store in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow between 2016 and its closure in 2019.
Buchanan Bus Station is the main bus terminus in Glasgow, Scotland, and is located between the Townhead and Cowcaddens districts on the north eastern side of the city centre. It is the terminus for journeys between the city and other towns and cities in Scotland, as well as long-distance services to other parts of the United Kingdom and some international journeys.
Parliamentary Road was a major street in the Townhead area of the city of Glasgow, Scotland, and was originally the district's main thoroughfare. Most of the street was removed by the late 1980s as part of successive regeneration schemes in Townhead and neighouring Cowcaddens, and as such almost none of the street remains evident to the present day.
The Metropole Theatre started as the Scotia and was built in 1862 at 116, Stockwell Street, Glasgow, Scotland. Built to the designs of architect Robert Black for James Baylis, who later built the Theatre Royal in the Cowcaddens area of the city, it opened as the Scotia Hall, holding over 3000 people, with stalls and two galleries, reputed to be the first purpose built commercial music-hall in Scotland. Due to fire in 1875 it was rebuilt to the designs of architects Campbell Douglas and James Sellars and renamed The Scotia Variety Theatre, claiming to be the largest and best variety company in Scotland.
Glasgow City Centre is the central business district of Glasgow, Scotland. It is bordered by the Saltmarket, High Street and Castle Street to the east, the River Clyde to the south, and the M8 motorway to the west and north. It is made up of the areas of Garnethill, Blythswood Hill, and Merchant City, though parts of Cowcaddens, Townhead, Anderston and Calton also fall within its boundaries.
Cineworld Glasgow Renfrew Street is a cinema on Renfrew Street, Glasgow, Scotland, located in the north-east of the city centre. It is adjacent to Buchanan Bus Station and the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, as well as being close to Sauchiehall Street and Buchanan Galleries. At 62 m (203 ft) tall, the building is currently the tallest cinema in the world.
St Andrew House is a prominent high-rise building in the centre of Glasgow, Scotland.
The Tron Church at Kelvingrove is a 19th-century church located in the Kelvingrove neighbourhood in the West End of Glasgow, and formerly known as Henry Wood Hall when it was the home of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra from 1979–2012. Originally the home of a Congregational church, the building is now home to the congregation of The Tron Church, an evangelical presbyterian church meeting in three locations across Glasgow.
Sandyford is an area of Glasgow, Scotland. It is north of the River Clyde and forms part of the western periphery of the city centre. Formerly the name of a ward under Glasgow Town Council in the first part of the 20th century, it is within a continuous area of fairly dense urban development bordering several other neighbourhoods whose mutual boundaries have blurred over time, and is possibly less well known than all of the places which adjoin it, particularly Anderston and Finnieston.
Locarno Ballrooms were a series of large public ballrooms located in England and Scotland and were represented in most major British cities.
The Glasgow Royal Concert Hall was officially opened on 5 October 1990 , at a gala performance attended by HRH The Princess Royal . The building was initially to be known simply as the Glasgow International Concert Hall , but had Royal status conferred upon it just a few weeks before the opening.
Media related to Glasgow Royal Concert Hall at Wikimedia Commons