Materials in the History & Background section were first published in conjunction with events leading up to the opening of the Kimmel Center in December 2001.

An Interview with Wolfgang Sawallisch about The Philadelphia Orchestra's new home

How do you feel about leaving the Academy of Music and moving to the Kimmel Center?
Wolfgang Sawallisch: Let me start by saying that many people are sentimental about the Academy of Music. I adore the Academy, too, but an opera house is very different acoustically from a concert hall. A big part of the Philadelphia audience does not know what the great sound of The Philadelphia Orchestra can be.Our new hall will be a very exciting place to hear this orchestra again in new ways. We will all of us be sentimental about leaving behind the Academy as our home for more than one hundred years. A century is a long time,but there is a new century ahead of us now. Looking forward to a new future is as important as looking again at where we have come from.

What has your involvement been in developing the Kimmel Center?
Wolfgang Sawallisch: I of course came to this city as music director in 1993. But I had visited many times before and first conducted this great orchestra in 1966. The orchestra had already commissioned a design for a new concert hall when I had arrived now in 1993. The leaders, with Mr. Stephen Sell and Mr. Joseph Neubauer and then with Joe Kluger, had developed those plans. It was with Russell Johnson as the acoustician, and I knew his work, which was very good, and I have come to know him even better through our collaboration together. We made sure that we kept him as our acoustician now even with the new design put together while I am here which has become our Kimmel Center.
Designing a building is a long procedure, and we all worked very hard at it. We began by developing a listing of what we wanted, what was to be important to us. There were five or six things that we said had to be accomplished. Let me see if I can tell you them: One, of course, is superior acoustics,where we can both rehearse and perform. And, I think number two, where also we can record. Making recordings in your own concert hall, where you are comfortable and know the sound, that is important. Number three, I think that is next, was to add on not just the ability, the capability for sound recording, but also today to do visual recordings, tobe able to send our complete performances out beyond the concert hall on television or discs, and so forth. Number four, this is to be our home. Other groups may at times perform here, but it is our schedule that goes into the calendar first, to know that we can do and rehearse the way we need to with regular concerts or for special projects also.Backstage rooms were important too, and we have many areas that have been designed for us that the public will not see. Dressing rooms, and storage for music and instruments. All of this we started with as we worked with Mr.Viñoly to create this new building.

Can you talk about Russell Johnson's working relationship with the Orchestra?
Wolfgang Sawallisch: Russell Johnson has come to know this orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, through this long process of listening to the orchestra play, not just at home in the Academy but in many halls on tour also. He has spent much time talking with all of us, the individual musicians, section by section, and so forth. He is a good listener, which,perhaps, is exactly what an acoustician must be. I think he is the best. My many meetings with him have caused me to know this. He has worked on many new halls which have all turned out to be, to sound quite excellent. The building, this Kimmel Center may of course look quite good thanks to the work of Mr. Viñoly, but for me it will be the sound of the hall that is most important. Symphonic music, just like opera, is for both the eyes and the ears. But for the ears most importantly.

How do you compare the great halls around the world? Do they really sound different from one another?
Wolfgang Sawallisch: The answer is yes, they sound very different. I have appeared as a conductor around the world at very many of the great halls, and the lesser ones too - so very many halls and in opera houses also of course. I have conducted concerts with The Phialdelphia Orchestra on four of the continents, also, in North and South America, Asia, and of course all across Europe. One can learn to play well in many halls, but some are very special and help you out, so that the playing is easier to do and you can concentrate your work,your energy not just on the balance of each player with another and between the sections, but in the very best halls like Vienna's Musikverein, the building itself helps you. The room that you perform in is an instrument also, you see, and in the best of them, which I believe we will now have here in Philadelphia, then we will be allowed not just to play our music for the audience but we will be able to communicate some how more fully. What we do is such an important substance in life, so that for me we cannot live without music.

What are your thoughts about moving into a new home?
Wolfgang Sawallisch: We have all of us done this in our lives at some moment. It is different, perhaps, for an orchestra, for an organization more so than for a family. But we are in many ways a family,and we spend much time together. And I am pleased to be here for this moment. It is so important that a great orchestra like this one in Philadelphia, that it should have its own home. So that it can have its very own sound and space in a hall designed just especially for its most special qualities.Yes, The Philadelphia Orchestra became a great symphony in the Academy of Music, this is true, and many people did this, and were responsible for doing this. But it can continue as an even greater musical instrument, as you might say,now in its second century. And the future can be so much more now with this new home standing so high and proud in the center of city on Broad Street. The opening at the Kimmel Center will be a special time. I know this and look forward to being here with these musicians and to making music together with them in this great new building.