Hamburgs stunning new Elbphilharmonie concert hall.
Hamburg's stunning new Elbphilharmonie concert hall. iStock/ThomasFluegge

Hamburg's much-delayed and very expensive Elbphilharmonie concert venue officially opened for business on Wednesday night, and much has been made of the design of the building, striking on both the interior and exterior. It's a gorgeous building and almost immediately has become the central landmark in the recently revivified city of Hamburg—Germany's second largest in terms of population but a relative lagger in terms of cultural significance. Pundits think the Elbphilharmonie will change that; even if it doesn't, it is a remarkable structure. Expect the next James Bond movie to have a sequence filmed there.

Wednesday night's debut concert had an unconventional program, with works dating from the Renaissance up to modern day (and a little Beethoven at the end for good measure). The ceremony kicked off with pieces from two of Hamburg's own—Mendelssohn and Brahms—but almost everything else came from less well known composers from across Europe. The whole thing is on YouTube in a special 360-degree video (you need certain browsers to watch it—Safari won't work). There's a part where an oboist plays a solo from up in the balcony, which suggests the symphony hall's complicated layout eludes any single conventional setup.

Music aside, the building, which contains three separate performance venues, is absolutely gorgeous. And it'd better be, considering how much it went over budget: Swiss architecture firm pegged the budget at $197 million, but costs eventually blew up to a whopping $843 million. Wired has a fascinating article how algorithms helped design the very complicate acoustics in order to make it sound gorgeous, too, although it doesn't say if the large symphony hall's resemblance to the Galactic Senate from the Star Wars prequels was deliberate. The Guardian has a review of the concert but doesn't have very much to say about the acoustics themselves.

The venue's home orchestra, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, has a pretty well-known international reputation, albeit one that may have slightly receded during the long years of the venue's construction. But with Hamburg having just unveiled one the most impressive concert venues in the world, it seems likely the orchestra will raise its own bar to match. Visiting ensembles and soloists will play there, too (including EinstĂĽrzende Neubauten, because, you know, Germany), although many of the performances in the grand hall are already sold out. Regardless, the place is damn pretty to look at.