As the Frick Expands, New York City Music Suffers

Unmentioned by Mr. Tommasini and the various commentators is the major contribution to the Frick’s chamber music series made by its executive one-woman booking committee, Joyce Bodig. While the physical aspects of the venue are undoubtedly important, the most important element is the quality, variety, and creativity of the performing artists. Ms. Bodig has consistently presented top-tier musicians, many of whom don’t have big names in the mainstream musical world but whose worth as artists is often superior to those who do. Being a colleague in the classical music world, I know that she spends long hours starting in the late spring and all through the summer listening to stacks of CDs and talking with many others in our field In order to select the ideal artists for her unique series. Unless Joyce Bodig lives forever, her successor, if there is to be one, may be a bigger shock to our cultural life then the new hall. Gene Murrow Executive Director Gotham Early Music Scene

Horrible. This is an erasure of civic memory. My condolences. No new concert room could ever have the warmth of the sound of the old halls.

Apparently Mr. Tommasini and I hearing very different things. I have always found the music room to be relatively poor acoustically: muddy, "dense," with fairly poor separation. After all, the room is literally a square peg in a round hole - or, in this case, a round room "shoehorned" into a square one. In this regard, at least some of the sound will always "leak" into the space between the curved wall and the square space behind it, thus affecting the acoustic. As well, the non-sloped seating does not provide the best sound in every seat (which is why all the truly great halls have sloped seating, if not stepped seating). So while I enjoy (most of the time) hearing music in that room, I am very much looking forward to hearing it in a properly acoustically-created room with sloped seating. Bravo to the Frick for this particular aspect of its proposal.

The most breathtaking music I have ever heard was in this room - an encore by the ensemble Tragicomedia, playing Les Bergeries, from Bach's Anna Magdelena notebook. It came unexpectedly, and afterwards hung on the air around us. It is a great loss that the room will no longer hold such moments

Please don't ruin a hall that works so well and is coveted as a chamber music venue for small groups. The new hall, while it may copy the old one, may not be successful and then will not be used in the same way that it has been up to know.

Chamber musics hidtory is one of bring perhotmed in small, intimate spaces and sponsored by generally wealthy families in their homes. The Frick was a home. And it ought not be dominated by the visual arts.

It is my hope that the original blueprints of the music room can be found and space be built elsewhere - if not in NYC at least somewhere in the world. Music lovers NEED spaces like the music room: spaces where the pearl-escence of every passage and note can be cherished.

I disagree with Theodore Grunewald, about: “destroying” the Frick’s music room would be “an erasure of New York City’s cultural and civic memory.” ---- Saving the New York Public Library is important to NYC culture, but the Frick's music room, is not in that category of hierarchical importance.

Even though this music room is not being destroyed (like the old Met, etc.) but rather "recommissioned", I find this decision extremely regrettable whatever the quality of the acoustics and the capacity of the new "hall". I understand that Frick wanted his "house" to be maintained as much as possible in the manner in which he had lived in it. This music room is part of New York's history, including its music performance history. I see no reason that this special music room and its history can not be preserved without expense to the Frick's gallery expansion needs. Just another dent in New York City's cultural heritage and its special places.

When the arts are superintended by management types, professional fund-raisers, the "art market" and trust fund billionaires, this is what happens. It's why no one can learn the classical repetoire listening to WQXR and PBS is best known for Antiques Road Show and stilted British drama imports. These people will sooner destroy the arts than admit to their own unfitness to rule.

The Frick' salon-like space will not merely be turned into a gallery for special exhibitions as Mr. Tommasini writes—it will be gutted and completely rebuilt — making it impossible to undo once the Museum wakes-up and realizes what a boneheaded decision this was. Ironically, in addition to using the space for lectures and recitals, the Frick simultaneously exhibited paintings and drawings in the Music Room for more than eighty years. The also article states that "Preservationists fought for the space by seeking an interior landmark designation that would preserve it, but they were unsuccessful". This is not entirely true; well-known historic preservation advocate, Theodore Grunewald submitted a Request For Evaluation (RFE) for interior landmarking of (3) Frick interiors; two of which are to be gutted and rebuilt; the 1935 Music Room designed by John Russell Pope, and the (also) beautiful 1977 Reception Hall designed by John Barrington Bayley. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) received Mr. Grunewald's RFE, and both of these rooms are currently under active consideration for interior landmarking by the LPC. The LPC has *not* yet issued an official determination. The battle is not over, and you can still write the Commission urging preservation of the Music Room and Reception Hall at this link: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/lpc/about/submit-public-hearing-meeting-commen...

More of this from the Frick? I'm ambivalent about the music room. On one hand, it seems we obliterate the intimate, lovely, and quiet. On the other, what a pity that access can only be gained if one has 40-$45 to devote to the experience there. How do the privileged endure it all?

I haven't been to The Frick. I will have to put it on my list of things to do. I am more involved with what is going on at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as Columbia University. Based on the photo of the article's discussed music space, I say it does need to be edited. So a new space would be wanted by me. It looks very brown and dreary. Dark and dreary does not seem like a space for chamber music. Chamber music is really for a space like a front yard, or garden back yard nice space. I could say patio, but I don't think patio is the right word. ---- Nice, but not quaint, as if a realtor is describing a way too small studio as quaint, when really it is just way too small.... like a clothing closet, but it is an apartment. So, I disagree with this article's author.

The Mayor owes $300,000 to Frick land use and landmarks larded lobbyists, Kramer Levin (Google Bunny Lindenbaum). Those monied representatives, with obvious conflicts of interest, pushed through an unacceptable application to the landmarks preservation commission. We are not fools. Eventually, justice will prevail for the city and its political systems. We're not done.

Frederic Chiu is a perfect spokesman for the salon-style performance. And the Frick was, it seems, a perfect place for such performances. It's difficult to imagine how one improves upon perfection.

The chamber music experience that Mr. Tommasini describes should be valued as the zenith of aesthetics in this day and age. Chamber music is much more intimate than the symphony or opera. It is palpable. Also, with less musicians there is less overhead and fewer logistics. The chamber music program is usually shorter. It has an more appropriate fit for these times, and is more personal. When a major institution like the Frick changes, it erodes the viability of chamber music in society. That's a real shame. Rather than go subterranean, the Frick Collection’s music room should stay as is, as a beacon for all the arts that stand above considerations of business, marketing, and efficiency. Everything it seems, has been reduced to a transaction, and that is not what art is about.

This would be a terrible tragedy. They would be wise to rethink a decision that cannot be undone. Why can't they realize the gem that they have and actually celebrate it and put on more concerts?

Wow. I wished I known of this space's existance at some point point in my 50 years as a born and bred New Yorker and Manhattanite. I go to the Frick a couple times a year. I used to source venues for a living. I'm on the board of a classcial music organization. Never heard of it. How can we miss it, as a city, if the city was not invited or, much, wanted ?

Fine concert halls for chamber music still exist. The finest chamber music hall, in my humble opinion, is just north of NYC. The Howland Chamber Music Circle in Beacon, NY, produces extraordinary concerts in a historic hall designed by Richard Morris Hunt seating just 120 patrons.

Put the new special exhibition gallery in the renovated basement space and leave the music room alone.

The destruction of this performance elegant space is really part of a more ambitious plan for the .01 percent to turn all the museums into private clubs and party houses for their friends and families. None of the proposed changes to any of these institutions involve drastically lowering admission and serving a greater number of the general public. These institutions should be forced to have at least one free day a week and any additional construction should proceed underground without destroying any of the existing spaces. That would solve any objections to expansion to these institutions whose mandate is to always serve the public good.

Selldorf is a very talented Architectural firm and I have no doubt they will do an amazing job during the renovation and expansion of the Frick. There are very few historic projects of this kind of public exposure that do not cause some social anxiety of some kind. I look forward to see the completion and careful handling of this landmark institution.

The room in the Frick is not irreplaceable. Manhattan is full of beautiful century-old churches with shriveling congregations that will make wonderful chamber music venues.