The Salle Pleyel (, meaning "Pleyel Hall") is a

concert hall A concert hall is a cultural building with a stage (theatre), stage that serves as a performance venue and an auditorium filled with seats. This list does not include other venues such as sports stadia, dramatic theatres or convention ...

in the 8th arrondissement of

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, designed by the acoustician

Gustave Lyon Gustave Lyon (19 November 1857 – 12 January 1936) was a French piano maker, acoustician and inventor. He was head of Pleyel et Cie from 1887. Life Lyon was born in Paris in 1857, son of Jacob Lyon, a singing teacher, and his wife Fanny ''née'' ...

together with the architect Jacques Marcel Auburtin, who died in 1926, and the work was completed in 1927 by his collaborators André Granet and Jean-Baptiste Mathon. Its varied programme includes contemporary and popular music. Until 2015, the hall was a major venue for classical orchestral music, with

Orchestre de Paris The Orchestre de Paris () is a French orchestra based in Paris. The orchestra currently performs most of its concerts at the Philharmonie de Paris. History In 1967, following the dissolution of the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du ...

and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France as resident ensembles.

Early history

An earlier salle Pleyel seating 300 opened in December 1839 at 22 rue Rochechouart. From 1849 to 1869, the impresario Charlotte Tardieu organized four chamber concerts a year at the hall. It saw the premieres of many important works, including Chopin's Ballade Op.38 and Scherzo Op.39 (26 April 1841), Ballade Op.47 (21 February 1842) and Barcarolle Op.60 (16 February 1848), the

second The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of U ...

(1868) and fifth (1896) piano concertos by Saint-Saëns, Fauré's Violin Sonata No. 1 (27 January 1877), and Ravel's '' Pavane pour une infante défunte'' and '' Jeux d'eau'' (5 April 1902) and Sonata for Violin and Cello (6 April 1922). A replacement 3,000-seat hall was commissioned in the 1920s by the piano manufacturer Pleyel et Cie. The design work was divided in two: the main designer of the concert hall was

, an acoustician, director of the Pleyel musical instrument factory and an inventor of several musical instruments. But he entrusted the architectural design to the architect Jacques Marcel Auburtin, who died in 1926, and the work was completed by two of his collaborators, André Granet and Jean-Baptiste Mathon. The building work began on 5 December 1924 on the land at No. 252 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, near Place de l'Etoile, and was completed in 1927. The inauguration concert by the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, with

Robert Casadesus Robert Marcel Casadesus (; 7 April 1899 – 19 September 1972) was a renowned 20th-century France, French pianist and composer. He was the most prominent member of a Casadesus, distinguished musical family, being the nephew of Henri Casadesus an ...

as soloist and

Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century c ...

Maurice Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...

, and Philippe Gaubert as conductors, included music by

Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...

, Manuel de Falla, Stravinsky, Paul Dukas,

Debussy Achille Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionism in music, Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influe ...

, and Ravel. A fire ravaged the interior of the hall on 28 June 1928 and the renovation cost made it impossible to repay the loan to Crédit Lyonnais bank, which eventually took over the property and reduced the seats to 2,400. They in turn sold the hall to Hubert Martigny in 1998. Stravinsky returned to Paris to conduct the French premiere of ''

Agon () is the Greek personification for a conflict, struggle or contest, describing a concept of the same name. This could be a contest in athletics, in chariot or horse racing, or in music or literature at a public festival in ancient Greece. i ...

'' in 1957, and of '' Threni'' in 1958, both at the Salle Pleyel.

Recent history

From 2002 to 2006, the hall underwent major renovation. The acoustics of the hall and the public and service areas were improved, and seating decreased from the post-fire 2,400 seats to 1,913. The Salle Pleyel has been owned by the Cité de la Musique since 2009. Its status as a classical music venue effectively ended in January 2015, when its programming was transferred to the newly-opened Philharmonie de Paris concert hall. An orchestral concert featuring live performances of music from various

Bandai Namco Entertainment is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game video game publisher, publisher, and the video game branch of the wider Bandai Namco Holdings group. Founded in 2006 as it is the successor to Namco's home and arcade video game ...

-produced video games, such as '' Dark Souls'' and ''

Tekken is a Japanese media franchise centered on a series of fighting games developed and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment (formerly Namco). The franchise also includes film and print adaptations. The main games in the series follow the events ...

'', took place on 4 February 2017. The event was attended by Motoi Sakuraba and Go Shiina, composers of the aforementioned games.

Design influence

In terms of influence, at the time of its completion, the concert hall was lauded for its acoustics by the leading modernist architect

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...

. The interior form (tapered plan and curved ceiling) had an influence on the design of churches designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, firstly in his proposal for a church in Helsinki (1929, unbuilt) but also for a church he designed in

Wolfsburg Wolfsburg (; Eastphalian language, Eastphalian: ''Wulfsborg'') is the fifth-largest city in the Germany, German state of Lower Saxony, on the river Aller (Germany), Aller east of Hanover and west of Berlin. Wolfsburg is famous as the locat ...

, Germany (built 1960).Schildt, Göran, ''Alvar Aalto: A Life's Work - Architecture, Design and Art'', Otava, Helsinki, 1994, p.46.

References

External links

* {{Coord, 48, 52, 37.18, N, 2, 18, 3.73, E, type:landmark_region:FR, display=title Concert halls in France Buildings and structures in the 8th arrondissement of Paris Event venues established in 1839 1839 establishments in France Buildings and structures completed in 1927 Music venues in Paris Orchestre de Paris Pleyel et Cie