… And Lincoln Center may finally have a real concert hall…

It was hard to believe Lincoln Center would ever get its janky concert hall to work properly. But it has! The twicerenamed Philharmonic Hall, now David Geffen

Hall, is the classical music world’s Second Avenue Subway: the chimera that finally materialized.

The justcompleted renovation project demonstrated the philanthropic firepower of New York’s music lovers, who forked over $550 million. It showed off the organizational chops and collaborative spirit of Henry Timms and Deborah Borda, the respective presidents of Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic, who fasttracked construction so hard that they opened almost two years early. It bolstered the Philharmonic itself, which spent a season bouncing among venues and still found a loyal audience waiting when it returned.

Unquestionably, the hall sounds better than it did— a bar so low you could barely pass a piece of paper beneath it. The sound is bright and clear, sometimes aggressively so, but so far it has been more impressive than seductive. The musicians used to complain that they could barely hear one another and had to rely on guesswork to determine just how forte a fortissimo should be. (The answer was generally “When in doubt, play louder.”) Now, every whisper and tap is exposed, and the players are still getting used to that acoustic nakedness, learning to adapt their style to the quirks of the hall.

Geffen’s completion makes it easier for the human part of the ensemble to evolve. With a symphony orchestra, each concert is a blank slate: a chance to woo another listener, to freshen up a dusty classic. This 180yearold institution can feel young again.