The Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Concert Hall (abbr. KZCh, Tchaikovsky Concert Hall) is the building and concert hall of the Moscow State Academic Philharmonic, opened in 1940. The hall hosts music festivals, concerts of academic music, poetry evenings and performances. In total, about 300 concerts are held a year, which more than 350 thousand people annually attend.
The building houses the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow Philharmonic, the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia named after Evgeny Svetlanov, the Folk Dance Ensemble named after Igor Moiseev, the Pyatnitsky Choir, the Orchestra of Russian Folk Instruments named after Nikolai Osipov and other groups. Also in the building is the entrance to the Chamber Hall of the Moscow Philharmonic.
The Tchaikovsky Hall is in the Tverskoy district of Moscow, at the intersection of Tverskaya and Sadovaya-Triumfalnaya streets. The facade and colonnade of the building are an integral part of the architectural ensemble of Triumfalnaya Square, created by Dmitry Chechulin in the 1950s. The southern vestibule of the Mayakovskaya metro station is built to the left of the colonnade.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Buff Miniatures Theater was located on the concert hall site, then the Light Genre Theater Zon. In 1913, directly opposite the theater building, one of the first Moscow cinemas, the Khanzhonkov House, was opened, later the famous Moskva cinema. Nearby, on the site of the modern Theater of Satire, is the once-popular Circus of the Nikitin brothers, then the Music Hall.
Vsevolod Meyerhold planned to reconstruct the building on Triumfalnaya Square and turn it into the largest and most modern theater in Moscow. Architects Sergei Vakhtangov, the son of Yevgeny Vakhtangov, and Mikhail Barkhin prepared the design of the theater building. The 1930 project included a domed roof, a glass ceiling and a transformable stage of two movable circles.
By 1937, the frame of the building was almost wholly erected. However, in January 1938, construction was stopped due to the order to liquidate the Meyerhold Theater.
In 1938, the Mayakovskaya metro station, designed by A. Dushkin, was opened in the corner of the building.
In 1939, the unfinished building was handed over to the Moscow Philharmonic for conversion into a concert hall, which received the name P. I. Tchaikovsky. At the same time, the project’s author, Vsevolod Meyerhold, was arrested, and in 1940 (six months before the hall’s opening), he was shot.
The volume of the building is divided into two parts: deaf (with a portico) and fractional – with a large number of windows of different sizes and types of processing. The outer volume of the building took the form of a parallelepiped with a 10-column portico facing Triumphal Square. The blind part of the building is a rectangle stretched along Triumfalnaya Square, inside which the concert hall itself is inscribed. In the fractional part, there is the entrance to the metro, as well as the administrative part and rehearsal rooms. The Moscow metro lobby and a restaurant occupy part of the basement and ground floor.
The building stands on an inclined surface, so the height in different areas varies from 27 meters (near Tverskaya Street) to 31 meters (near the Satire Theatre).
The architecture of the main façade is based on the juxtaposition of the blank plane of the wall (with a geometric ornament of terrasite plaster) with the colonnade standing in front, accentuating the main entrances to the building.
The concert hall includes stalls, three amphitheaters and two tiers of balconies. There are 1505 seats around the stage in a semicircle. Three Steinway & Sons grand pianos and a Rieger-Kloss organ are installed in the hall. Stage parameters: height – 15 m, depth – 20 m, width: at the organ – 11 m, middle of the stage – 20 m, proscenium – 23 m.
The concert hall has preserved the constructivism of the internal arrangement designed by Barkhin and Vakhtangov, as well as the internal layout – the arrangement of auditoriums rising in the form of an amphitheater, large passages connecting the foyer, hall and stage to form a traditional medieval square theater. For the convenience of visitors, wardrobe sections were located on each floor.
By the hall’s opening, there had been an organ of the German company E. F. Walker (Ludwigsburg, Germany), which Pyotr Tchaikovsky played in the 60s of the 19th century. Previously, the organ stood in the St. Peter and Paul Church in St. Petersburg on Nevsky Prospekt. In 1959, due to severe damage during the transportation of the instrument from Leningrad to Moscow, this organ was replaced.
The new organ of the Czechoslovak firm Rieger-Kloss has 81 registers and is one of the largest organs in Russia. Body length 11 meters, width 6 meters, height 8 meters. The organ’s interior consists of three floors, where 7800 sounding pipes are located. The largest size reaches 6.5 meters in height, 2.6 meters in the perimeter, weighing up to 220 kg each. The height of the smallest-sounding pipes is 20 mm, and the diameter is 6 mm. The control panel is a complex electrical mechanism on which four keyboards for hands and one for legs are installed. It is also equipped with a control signaling device. Jiri Reinberger and Leonid Roizman designed the original disposition of the organ. Its subsequent reconstructions in 1970 and 1977 were initiated by the musician Harry Grodberg.
Working hours: daily, 09:00–22:00
Address: Triumfalnaya Square, 4, Moscow
Metro: Mayakovskaya
