For three days, the orchestra, under the direction of General Music Director Dirk Kaftan, and acoustician Dr. Martijn Vercammen from the renowned specialist firm Peutz will go through various sound scenarios by changing orchestra set-ups in order to adjust the acoustics. "The Beethoven Orchestra and I are on tenterhooks ahead of this unique process of not only reviving the hall for the first time, but also testing and adjusting the acoustics with the team," says Dirk Kaftan.
In preparation for the acoustic tests, Dr. Vercammen had already carried out measurements in the hall last week. His conclusion from these measurements is already clear: "It has become a concert hall again." The Peutz office has been an integral part of the specialist planning team since the start of the project. On the basis of numerous measurements - before the renovation and during the work - the office developed a sophisticated package of measures. The structural measures for this were carried out with particular care - but there is always a bit of tension in the final optimization of the acoustics.
"The fact that the Beethovenhalle should finally sound like a high-quality concert hall again after the extensive refurbishment is one of the most important goals of this project," explains project manager Steffen Göbel. "We are all relieved and also a little proud that our joint work has already led to this result with the first measurements. On this basis, we now have enough time for fine-tuning together with the orchestra. We are now certain that when the Beethovenhalle reopens on December 16, 2025, it will once again be what it was built for in 1959: Bonn's premier address for classical music!"
