Concert Hall in Raiding
Almost 200 years ago, the musician Franz Liszt was born in the small community of Raiding in Burgenland. The composer and pianist, who achieved great fame during his lifetime, is the pride of the villagers – so much so that a concert hall has now been built there in his honour. The hall, which is designed specifically for Liszt’s music, can accommodate 600 concertgoers – in other words, almost the entire adult population of the village. The minimalist building is hidden behind the walls and trees of a small park. Its radiant white skin is a modest reference to the local rendered facades. In fact, though, this fine variation on a traditional texture was created not with conventional rendering, but with sprayed plastic. The cubic form of the concert hall opens quite naturally to the nearby house in which the musician was born. Only at second glance is it evident that the 18-metre-long undivided opening cannot be filled with conventional panes of glass. Five-centimetre-thick sheets of acrylic glazing transform the foyer into what resembles an outsize aquarium. Internally, too, one has to look twice: the curvature of the wooden cassette lining to the auditorium is scarcely noticeable. This extremely modern interpretation of the ornamentation found in Baroque halls for chamber music ensures a “resonance volume” with optimum acoustics and thus perfect conditions for the music of Franz Liszt.
