I rather
recently made a post about the concert hall “Salle Pleyel”. A couple of days
ago I had the opportunity to visit another well-known concert hall in Paris,
“Salle Gaveau”.
Like
“Pleyel”, “Gaveau” was an important piano manufacturer, established by J.G.
Gaveau in 1847. In 1960
“Gaveau” merged with “Erard” and then, for a while, their pianos were produced
by “Schimmel”. Today a French company owns the three brands “Erard”, "Pleyel”
and “Gaveau”. A very limited number of “Gaveau” pianos are still produced.
The building
with the “Salle Gaveau” opened in 1907 and included also the manufacturer’s
headquarters. When “Gaveau” went bankrupt in the 1960’s, the building failed to
disappear and to be replaced by a car parking
place, but was finally saved by private investors - also music lovers. The
concert hall was later restored, with an effort to reestablish the original
1907 design, and opened again in 2001. Its capacity has always been limited to
about 1000 seats. (The seats are really nice and quite comfortable!)
The reason
I was there was to watch some kind of – almost three hours’ - musical show organized
by the school my grand-kids attend. With the rest of the family I was a proud
grandpa!
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