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The Barbican

(arslan.io)
723 points farslan | 2 comments | 12 May 25 15:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.601s | source
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rjmunro ◴[12 May 25 16:59 UTC] No.43965148[source]▶
I'm surprised the article doesn't mention the concert hall. It's one of London's most famous, with almost 2000 seats, and it's the London Symphony Orchestra's main home.

Until last lear, The Lead Developer conference (https://leaddev.com/) was held there, but it's moved to a larger venue for this year (I don't think the size of the main hall was the problem, it was the areas for break out etc.) They had a great talk about the history of the place: https://leaddev.com/leadership/you-are-here-the-story-of-the...

The Barbican Theatre is one of the London homes of the Royal Shakespeare Company, although they are looking to

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1. te_chris ◴[13 May 25 08:13 UTC] No.43970674[source]▶
Worth pointing out that, as a concert hall, it's extremely mediocre acoustically ( same as the Royal Fesitval Hall) - albeit pretty and I love it dearly. There was a plan to build a new, proper concert hall but it got scotched. Probably deservedly but it would've been wonderful to have a concert hall worthy of our musicians and enesembles.
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2. PaulRobinson ◴[13 May 25 10:04 UTC] No.43971329[source]▶
It's a pretty great theatre, and I also love it dearly as is. I don't mind the acoustics generally, but aware that some people moan about it.

I'm not sure there is a really, really great concert hall from an acoustics perspective in London. Back in Manchester I loved the Bridgewater because it was designed to be acoustically good no matter how many people were in the audience. I can't think of anything that modern and carefully thought through, so I tend to look for smaller venues with more "classical" approaches to acoustics (Wigmore, St Martins, and so on). Where do you like?