Grand Hall of the St Petersburg Philharmonia

The Philharmonic's Grand Hall occupies the former Assembly of the Nobility building on Mikhailovskaya Street, erected in 1839 by the architect Paul Jacquot; the facade facing the square was designed by Carlo Rossi. Inside, the architect created a bright three-tiered hall with white columns, seating more than one and a half thousand listeners and renowned for its exceptional acoustics. From as early as the mid-19th century this was the venue for the capital's leading concerts: performers here included the Hungarian Franz Liszt, the Frenchman Hector Berlioz, the German Richard Wagner, the pianist Clara Schumann and the singer Pauline Viardot, while audiences here first saw Anna Pavlova dance the dying swan. The Philharmonic itself, as a state institution, came into being later: on 12 June 1921, under the direction of the conductor Emil Cooper, the first concert of works by Tchaikovsky was given here. The new organisation owed its orchestra to the imperial court's musicians' choir, founded by decree of Alexander III back in 1882 — it was this very ensemble that in 1934 became the first in the country to receive the honorary title of Honoured Collective. On 12 May 1926 this stage saw the first performance of the First Symphony by the young Dmitri Shostakovich, and eleven years later, his Fifth Symphony, conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky, who led the orchestra for almost half a century. A special chapter belongs to the Siege: in the autumn of 1941 the main company was evacuated to Novosibirsk, but concert life within the hall's walls did not stop entirely — after a winter break, performances resumed in the spring of 1942, given by the city's radio orchestra, then directed by Karl Eliasberg. On 9 August 1942 it was this combined ensemble that performed Shostakovich's Seventh, the "Leningrad" Symphony, here — an event now commemorated by a memorial plaque on the wall. In all, 121 performances were given on this stage during the years of the Siege. The Honoured Collective returned from evacuation in the autumn of 1944 and opened the next concert season by the end of October. The hall is fitted with a concert organ: an instrument by the German firm Walcker appeared in 1931, replaced in 2004 by a new organ built by the Klais workshop. There are 1,318 numbered seats in the stalls and tiers. Since its founding, the hall has remained the home of the Philharmonic's symphony orchestra, carrying on lecture and publishing work, and thanks to its outstanding acoustics it is regularly used for recordings by the world's leading record labels.