In renovating Geffen Hall, the acoustics came first.  Illustration by Richard McGuire; Animation by Nicolo Bianchino “My father used to call Lincoln Center the Travertine Mausoleum.” That’s Jamie Bernstein, the daughter of Leonard Bernstein, who was the conductor of the New York Philharmonic when it moved to Lincoln Center, in 1962. In a fascinating piece in this week’s issue, Rivka Galchen dives into what it takes to succeed at the “high-wire act,” as one designer says, of engineering concert-hall acoustics. At the Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center, not only was the sound “antiseptic,” as a Times critic once put it, but there were too many seats, and the musicians seemed far from the audience. When the current C.E.O. of the Philharmonic visited as a child, “she thought that the musicians, so small and so distant, might be toys.” Recently, the renamed Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center has undergone a multi-year, multimillion-dollar renovation to fix some of these problems. But improving the acoustics was not just a question of sound design but of architecture and physics as well. And then there’s the importance of psychoacoustics—or how emotional factors such as mood and a sense of place can affect how people understand music. “This is much more complicated than making a nuclear power plant,” one of the experts in charge of the redesign said. “Though it’s more devastating if you get a nuclear power plant wrong.” —Jessie Li, newsletter editor Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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