Critical Response to the Sage Gateshead

''Roger Norrington's ... Brahms' First Symphony ; 45 minutes of utterly committed, passionately driven, spine tinglingly exhilarating music-making. Beautiful hardly begins to describe it. Could Norrington have carried it off without a chamber orchestra as attentive as the Northern Sinfonia? They supplied the perfect balance to flesh out the conductor's asceticism: characterful woodwind playing--- not least Tom Owen's plaintive oboe--- sparking up an engrossing dialogue with the strings all the way to a finale brimming with good humour and vivacity. A scintillating evening
The Times, 29 April 2005

On the outside the £70m Norman Foster designed concert hall looks like a conventional big iconic development, all shiny glass and space age curves. However, the DNA of The Sage Gateshead is imprinted with its small-scale roots. As well as providing performance space, the flash quayside building is the new home for one of the UK's most successful community-based music outreach programmes serving the north-east. If more small organisations can pull off this kind of trick, big may yet prove to be beautiful.
The Guardian, 6 April 2005

And the winner is . . . The Sage Gateshead. For naive southerners venturing north, the discovery of the night was that Gateshead boasts a spectacular new hall on the banks of the Tyne, with acoustics that leave London's South Bank standing.
The Guardian, 7 March 2005
(reviewing the BBC World Music Awards held in The Sage Gateshead)

A town that once launched ships to distant shores, Gateshead now watches the world breeze in-last week bearing Stratocasters from Mali, tablas from Calcutta and acceptance speeches in Arabic, assorted Spanish and Bulgarian, as the fourth Radio 3 world music awards took to The Sage Gateshead, Norman Foster's curvaceous new venue on the Tyne. A big, beautiful, democratic space, with exceptional acoustics designed to show off music of all kinds-it's little wonder that eclectic, keen-to-be-seen Radio 3 senses what controller Roger Wright calls an 'uncanny connection' with this unthinkably glamorous new soulmate. ...
The Observer, 13 March 2005

The musicians loved the friendly acoustics and bold riverside presence of The Sage Gateshead.
Financial Times, 9 March 2005

As the debate still rages over the legacy of Tippett, might it be Gateshead that decides the outcome? The Sage is treating the composer's centenary year more comprehensively than any other concert hall, with visits by the Hallé, LSO and The Lindsays offering an excellent opportunity to take stock of a challenging body of work. [Northern Sinfonia] showed off the hall's warm acoustic, the brass basking in a warm glow of hazy rapture, and the strings tautly responsive to Zehetmair's every gesture.
The Times, 7 March 2005

For a chamber orchestra to take on the grand sweep of a Sibelius score would, on the face of it, be a gamble; and even more so his one-movement seventh symphony. But for the Northern Sinfonia, performing at The Sage Gateshead, it was a risk that paid off.
From the opening touch of the timpani to its driven conclusion, musical director Thomas Zehetmair had his finger firmly on the pulse of the piece. Evoking Sibelius' landscape of frozen tundras, the music blossomed. An incomparable experience.
Northern Echo, 8 March 2005

The stunning new Sage Gateshead building, fashioned by renowned architect Sir Norman Foster, promises to be a major musical resource centre in the North East. It is host to myriad concerts, and is committed to supporting schools in the area. All local schools have been invited to take part, and Gateshead Council has agreed to fund local schools to enable them to visit for free.
Times Education Supplement, 11 February 2005

The St Petersburg Philharmonic's visits to these shores are as brief as the Russian summer and as long in coming. Who, barely a year ago, would have anticipated that Yuri Temirkanov's world-class ensemble would play an exclusive, sold-out, three-day residence in Gateshead? The hall's tight, singing acoustic coped admirably, saturating the audience with reverberant sound of almost physical immediacy.
It is hard to pinpoint precisely what makes the St Petersburg Philharmonic so distinct from a European ensemble. It is partly to do with the instrumentalists' ability to merge into a fluid mass of energy, like a shoal of fish. Yet there is an intangible quality to the sound they make, particularly in the core Slavonic repertoire, which the Russians call dusha and we approximately term as soul. The extraordinary Russian invasion of Gateshead gave Tynesiders an opportunity to experience some of the sweetest soul music ever made.
The Guardian, 24 January 2005

In something of a coup, and a little over a month into its existence, The Sage Gateshead is hosting a brief but exclusive UK residency by one of Europe's leading orchestras, the St Petersburg Philharmonic. The new concert hall's superb clarity came into its own in Stravinsky's more chamber-scale passages (Petrushka). ... The acoustic lent its own focus on the wonderful warmth and richness of the strings, right from the double basses at the very start (Rachmaninov's 2nd Symphony) ... Facing a standing ovation, the orchestra responded with two numbers as encores, crystalline and ardent in turn, from Tchaikovsky ballets. This was music for which the warm and responsive Sage acoustic seems to be made.
Daily Telegraph, 21 January 2005

To get the St Petersburg Philharmonic to play three exclusive UK performances is the sort of coup that even the Edinburgh Festival finds hard to pull off.
The Guardian, 15 January 2005

Go to The Sage, Gateshead, for the week's most promising classical concerts. Yuri Temirkanov and the St Petersburg Philharmonic, currently one of the planet's very best orchestras, present three all-Russian concerts on Wed, Thur and Fri. If these forces cannot make The Rite of Spring roar or Rachmaninov soar, no one can.
The Times, 15 January 2005

[Black-tied James Naughtie was in Sussex and Paris, lucky chap, to host them in his quietly elegant way, while] the first TV transmission from the new Sage Gateshead was introduced by the estimable Howard Goodall (maker of the best TV music series of last year, Channel 4's outstandingly original Twentieth-Century Greats). The Creation proved the only decent concert before all that New Year Strauss began waltzing in from Vienna. A highly appropriate choice to launch the classical programme in Norman Foster's gleaming armadillo beside the Tyne, Haydn's masterwork came across with due power and much charm with the Northern Sinfonia seemingly reborn under its dynamic new conductor, Thomas Zehetmair.
The Observer, 2 January 2005

Fancy opera houses in pretentious cities open with exclusive black-tie galas. On Tyneside this weekend they dispensed with such stuffy nonsense. They threw open the doors of Gateshead's superb new Sage concert hall to an army of amazed citizens--- 15,000 of them, admitted free for three hours at a time--- and simply let the music roll. And how it rolled! Thirty-three hours of it, with a dozen events happening simultaneously most of that time. It will be an inspiring portent of how musical life could, and should, develop in the 21st century.
The Times, 20 December 2004

True to its all inclusive remit The Sage Gateshead chose not to mark the [opening] by staging a single block buster concert, but rather to offer little tasters of things it plans to do...
Daily Telegraph, 20 December 2004

Now I see the logic of the building. It promises to work very well indeed. Bookings are high, the programme is excellent, the school below is raring to go, and there is a real sense that this venue is in tune with Gateshead, and Newcastle across the Tyne.
The Guardian, 26 November 2004

As a venue, the Sage is pure joy -- exciting and inviting. The main hall and the recital hall, both acoustically hi-tech and adaptable, look wonderful, warm and intimate.
The Daily Telegraph, 27 November 2004

Another day, another breathtaking creation from Norman Foster ... The Musikverein on The Tyne
The Independent, 17 December 2004

One of the country's most stunning performance venues opened its doors to music-lovers today. A fanfare sounded as the £70 million Sage Gateshead received the first of more than 15,000 guests who will take in the splendid views overlooking the River Tyne. It is Norman Foster's first performance venue and opens in the same week as his stunning Millau Viaduct in France. The Sage represents another cultural landmark on the remarkable reinvention of Gateshead's once-industrial quayside.
Daily Mail, 17 December 2004

When The Sage, Gateshead, a pioneering centre for musical performance on the south bank of the River Tyne, opens its doors next week, it will represent the most exciting new development on the British arts scene for many years.
The Independent, 6 December 2004

Even the words ''spectacular concert hall'' diminish the Sage. This vast Norman Foster creation on the Gateshead bank of the Tyne is far more than a concert hall. When it opens next month, symbolically with a weekend of free concerts, it will not only offer the most radical diet of music-making in Britain but also embody the regenerative aspirations of a community. The old prejudices, the old ''elitist'' and ''populist'' tags, will be swept away. About time, too. In no other concert hall that I know is education given so central a place. And with music teaching so precarious in schools, never has such a facility been so needed. I hope it shines like a beacon, reminding local councils everywhere of their cultural responsibilities to the young.
The Times, 15 November 2004

There are two points that are particularly impressive about The Sage Gateshead. One is the quality of its acoustics, said by enthusiasts to be close to acclaimed venues such as the Meyerson Symphony Centre in Dallas or the Symphony Hall in Birmingham. The other is in the beauty of its design -- which is stunning in its own right.
The Guardian, 18 December 2004

Hall 1 bravely bucks a trend. It shies away from competing with the studio-like sonics of mega-halls in Manchester and Birmingham, and looks instead to the simpler, more intimate venues for which the classical repertory was originally conceived. The Fosters team and Arup acoustic engineers have taken a bold step in keeping the dimensions intimate: it genuinely feels like a hall designed by acousticians rather than accountants.
The Guardian, 23 December 2004

Haydn's Creation couldn't have been a more appropriate choice for the opening concert at The Sage Gateshead complex, although it must have felt more like ''paradise found'' for the Northern Sinfonia than Paradise Lost, the Milton poem on which the oratorio is based. From the remarkable evocation in ''Chaos'' of nothingness to the arrival of human life in the universe, which is symbolised at the end of the work, the music's cosmic power grid flickered, then blazed into life. In the music's nuances and wittily picturesque allusions, and in the assured attack of the choir and chamber orchestra, it was an evening of superb recreation, of vision fulfilled.
The evening was nicely low-key in comparison to the razzle-dazzle celebrity event that did the opening of [another hall] no favours. An extremely brief welcome to ''your hall'' was met with appreciative applause from a packed audience of all ages. Upon entering the gleaming concourse, under a soaring steel-clad shell, the foyer felt welcoming, with a stand-alone box office and-hurray!-plenty of ladies' loos. And Concert Hall 1 is inviting from the moment you step inside, its acoustics lively without being over-resonant. Once there are more sign-posts to Norman Foster's spectacular £70m building it should be easy, and indeed imperative, to get there.
The Independent, 24 December 2004

As a crescent moon shone and a wind blew straight up the Tyne, a brass fanfare announced that The Sage Gateshead's doors were about to be flung open for the first time. Then in strode the people, the van guard of the 15,000 who were to visit over the weekend. Like travelers in an unfamiliar airport terminal-which Foster's lofty, curvy concourse curiously resembles-they gazed about for departures to Mozart and other musical lands. Meanwhile, in an ovation of welcome, the staff applauded.
The Guardian, 20 December 2004

As the countdown begins to the opening of The Sage Gateshead, prepare to reconsider the phrase ''state of the art''. Clearly it has been used too glibly in the past. The new £70m centre for music seems set to eclipse many of the world's great concert venues and to exceed what are already high expectations.
The Newcastle Journal, 11 December 2004

As a piece of architecture The Sage Gateshead is breathtaking, but it's what The Sage Gateshead will do for the wider community that's the most impressive. Alongside the list of world-renowned orchestras you will find workshops for adults and children ...
Evening Chronicle, 17 December 2004

When The Sage Gateshead opens on Friday, it will be the culmination of years of meticulous planning, a clever marketing campaign, and, above all, a belief in what it is trying to do.
Northern Echo, 15 December 2004

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