Lotte Concert Hall to open in August

Lotte Concert Hall / Yonhap

Lotte Concert Hall CEO Kim Eui-joon

By Kwon Ji-youn

Lotte Concert Hall, located in the Lotte World Tower in southern Seoul, will open on Aug. 18.

It is the first classical concert hall to open in Seoul since the Seoul Arts Center (SAC) opened 28 years ago.

At a press event, Tuesday, Kim Eui-joon, CEO of Lotte Concert Hall and the Lotte Foundation for Arts, said construction of the hall is now in its finishing stages and that its concert line-up from August through December has been confirmed.

“We had hoped to open the hall in September last year, but circumstances weren’t on our side,” Kim said.

Lotte Concert Hall is a vineyard-style concert hall, with seating surrounding the stage, rising up in serried rows like the sloping terraces of a vineyard. Other vineyard-style concert halls include Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the symphonic concert hall of the Philharmonie de Paris.

Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagata Acoustics, an international acoustical consultancy firm, helmed the designing of the hall, which seats 2,036 guests, some 500 fewer than the SAC.

Lotte Concert Hall, which targets walk-in audiences, boasts a Rieger pipe organ comprised of 4,958 pipes and 68 stops, and has adopted a box-in-box formation to ensure all outside noise is shut out when a performance is being staged. It is the first large-scale hall to have a pipe organ installed.

Some 20 performances, under four themes, will be mounted from August through December to celebrate the hall’s opening.

The hall will hold concerts at 2 p.m., an unusual time for classical performances, to help make classical music more accessible to the general public.

“We hope that our afternoon concerts will create a new cultural paradigm in classical music,” said Kim. “Visitors to Lotte World Mall reach 15,000 to 20,000 per day. The mall and the concert hall together will undoubtedly create synergy.”

The very first performance will feature the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO) with a newly commissioned piece by Chin Un-suk on Aug. 18-19. Maestro Chung Myung-whun had been scheduled to conduct, but the orchestra is seeking a replacement following his abrupt resignation as music director. The Korean Symphony Orchestra (KSO) and conductor Lim Hun-jeong will follow with Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand,” and the Filarmonica della Scala, with works by Verdi and Rossini. The KSO’s “Symphony of a Thousand” will be performed by 1,030 musicians and singers, the way it was premiered in Munich in 1910.

Other anticipated performances include those by Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra; the Ensemble Intercontemporain; and composer Tan Dun.

Jean Guillou and Cameron Capenter are among those who will hold pipe organ recitals at Lotte Concert Hall later this year.

Afternoon concerts will feature performances by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie; Hwang Su-mi and the Ensemble Matheus; and pianist Lang Lang.

The KBS Symphony Orchestra, led by Yoel Levi, will perform all of Beethoven’s symphonies over four performances in December.

Lotte Concert Hall was built in line with the Lotte Group’s corporate social responsibility campaign. Shin Dong-bin, chairman of Lotte Group, was appointed chief director.

Lotte has yet to receive final approval for the concert hall from the Seoul Metropolitan Government.