In Hamburg, the long-awaited event took place – the opening of the Elbe Philharmonic, the construction of which took ten years! The incredibly lengthy construction for Germany cost the authorities 789 million euros, despite the initially planned 77 million euros.
On January 11, 2017, in the presence of 2,100 guests, including Angela Merkel and the country's president Joachim Gauck, the solemn opening took place, with tickets for the first row costing 10,000 euros.
The philharmonic was built by the architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, the authors of the Tate Museum in London and the Olympic Stadium in Beijing. The grand structure is located on the roof of a former warehouse in the Hamburg port and represents a futuristic superstructure that is impossible to behold without awe.
The curved glass panels of the facade imitate waves, in which the sky, the urban landscape, and water are reflected. The weight of the glass and steel superstructure is 78 thousand tons. The glass facade with an area of 16 thousand square meters consists of 1100 elements of various shapes. The total weight of the building is 200 thousand tons, and the height at its highest point reaches 110 meters.
The philharmonic opened in stages, the first stage being the presentation of the terrace at a height of 37 meters above ground, with an area of 4,000 square meters. The terrace consists of an observation deck separated from bars, restaurants, ticket offices, and the philharmonic foyer by panoramic windows.
It can be said that the Elbe Philharmonic is not just a concert hall, but an entire cultural complex. The philharmonic accommodates 2,100 people, the chamber music hall 550 people, a luxurious five-star hotel with 244 rooms, restaurants, a fitness center, and a conference center. Moreover, there are 44 penthouses here that can be purchased as private property.
The gypsum panels lining the main concert hall provide optimal acoustics at any point in the hall; the reflector on the ceiling evenly distributes sound waves, with each listener no more than 30 meters from the conductor. Concert tickets this season range from 9.9 to 218.9 euros.
