All-aboard for the Sala São Paulo

by Mark Holston / Américas (Jan-Feb, 2003)

THE JULIO PRESTES Railway Station in Sao Paulo, Brazil, may be the only train terminal in the world that can boast of two types of conductors. One, wearing a military-style uniform adorned with brass buttons with a whistle at his lips, keeps the trains running on time. But the other, attired in stately formal wear with a baton in hand, has a distinctly different mission--counting time for a major symphony orchestra.

Since 1999, this landmark edifice in one of the city's most historic neighborhoods has served the dual purpose of rail transportation hub and home of the State Symphony Orchestra of Sao Paulo, one of South America's most prestigious orchestras. But the project of converting half of the seven-decade-old ornate building from a rundown relic of a bygone era into a world-class concert space involved engineering and architectural considerations as challenging as the orchestral complexity of a Mahler symphony.

The coffee boom of the early 1900s produced great wealth in Sao Paulo and fostered an interest in funding grandiose architectural projects. One was building anew terminal for the Sorocabana Railroad, an important conduit for shipping coffee beans from the interior of the state to the city. A youngarchitect, Christiano Stockler das Neves, who had graduated a decade earlier from the University of Pennsylvania, was selected to design the new terminal. His vision was an elegant three-story structure that incorporated what Das Neves called a "modernized Louis XVI style" that he believed would be well received by Sao Paulo's conservative social elite.

The international financial crisis of 1929 delayed work on the station, which was finally completed in 1938. Its importance as a part of Sao Paulo's transportation network was relatively short lived and train service, for both passengers and freight, began to fall out of favor as the country started aggressively expanding its highway system. At the same time, the Campo Elisios neighborhood surrounding the station slowly began to deteriorate, further casting a shadow over what had for a brief time been one of the city's most attractive public buildings.

When the State Symphony Orchestra of Sao Paulo (OSESP--Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de Sao Paulo) was established in 1953, its founders could never have dreamed that their institution's destiny would one day be intertwined with a fallen-from-grace train terminal located in a decaying, unfashionable district of the city. But by the early 1990s, after years of success, the orchestra had fallen on hard times and had a list of needs as long as the benches in the station's passenger waiting room--a permanent home, anew artistic director, better musicians, and improved financial support. In 1997, well-known conductor John Neschling took over as the orchestra's leader and the search for a permanent home for the organization became a high priority.

When a survey of potential sites was conducted, Neschling and others were astounded to learn that the all but abandoned inner courtyard--the Grand Hall--of the old train station had almost the same dimensions as Boston's famed Symphony Hall. Three stories high and offset by thirty-two Corinthian columns, the open-air space offered the perfect oblong "shoe box" shape that had come into fashion for modern concert venues. Architect Nelson Dupre, working with Brazilian acoustical consultant Jose Augusto Nepomuceno and the U.S. acoustic engineering firm of Artec Consultants, produced a design to transform the courtyard into a fifteen-hundred-seat concert hall.

Maintaining the characteristics of the existing building was a design priority, while the need to isolate the area from the vibrations produced by commuter trains arriving and departing in the old terminal's other half was an overriding necessity.

The eighteen-month renovation project that followed produced a marvel of tasteful architectural design and advanced acoustical principles. Box seats are retrofit between the massive columns. The ceiling, one of the most difficult design elements to solve, comprises three dozen separate rectangular panels, each weighing several tons. The individual panel's position can be changed to acoustically "tune" the hall to the sonic demands of the size and characteristic of the ensembles and works performed. Once the conductor is convinced that a work such as Dvorak's "New World Symphony," recently performed by the OSESP, can't sound any better, the technical specifications are locked into a computer code. If the piece is performed again, acoustically preparing the hall will be as simple as a mouse click.

Three years ago, Sala Sao Paulo, as it is locally known, hosted its first performance by the state symphony. Today, the OSESP conducts ninety concerts a year, drawing an average audience of over thirteen hundred to the hall. The orchestra is on the rebound, as is the surrounding neighborhood. But the station's identity as a concert hall is so recent that most cab drivers still need to be told to go to the old Estacao Julio Prestes.