(bright music) (bright music) - [David] This bank built this building and then they insisted on making most of it a concert hall.

It's an incredible idea.

- [Steven] I love the thought that Rachmaninoff was here.

Horowitz, Toscanini, all that, but especially Rachmaninoff somehow, 'cause I love his music.

- [Kathy] The Troy Savings Bank Music Hall is one of the most acoustically perfect music halls in the world.

- Exactly that space or that volume is just about right.

And that is amazing.

- [Jon] Renaissance 150 celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Troy Savings Bank building.

As a part of that, we've engaged in this massive capital project, which is transformational for our organization.

(upbeat classical music) - Located in Albany, New York, the American Institute of Architects New York State is the voice of the architectural community and a resource for its members in service to society.

For more information, aianys.org.

- [Narrator] Architecture plus, an architectural firm specializing in education, healthcare, and community projects, like the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, serving local New York State communities for over 40 years.

More information available at aplususa.com.

What does retirement mean to you?

Travel, time with your family, serving the community?

Fagan Associates has been providing financial planning, wealth management, and investment advice for over 30 years to the capital region.

Located in Troy, New York.

- [Narrator 2] The Troy Savings Bank Charitable Foundation is the community legacy of the former Troy Savings Bank.

A proud supporter of Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, the Troy Savings Bank Charitable Foundation is committed to building stronger, healthier, and more vibrant communities.

(bright classical music) - [Kathy] Troy, post Civil War, we were a bustling city.

We had about 70,000 people.

The collar and cuff manufacturing was going full tilt.

Iron works were going down in South Troy.

We had trains coming into the city.

That's how busy it was.

About every 15 minutes, there was a train either coming or going out of the city of Troy.

There was always this very sophisticated taste for entertainment, even beginning all the way back when the Troy Museum had the very first production of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," took place in Troy.

So there was always a real push for a very sophisticated entertainment at the time.

The Troy Savings Bank has such an interesting history.

They go back to 1823, and they're originally located on First Street in the, what is known as the Atheneum Building.

And from the very beginning, they also were very much involved with the community.

This idea of having this savings bank, a people's bank, they would have spaces within the bank or that the bank owned and they lent out like the Mental and Moral Improvement Society.

They would have these amazing art shows that were there, bringing in Hudson River Valley artists and European sculpture.

Again, it's very early on in the 1820s and 30s, there is a high level of sophistication for entertainment.

And the bank is right there at the forefront of it.

- Around 1870, the bank had grown so much that they decided they needed a new headquarters building, and they thought it would be wonderful as a gift to the city to put this beautiful concert hall on top of their business.

And so that became their contribution to the cultural life of Troy at the time.

- I think people were very civic minded.

You know, Troy was a cultural center then, as it is now.

And they wanted to contribute to that.

They had the money to build something fabulous, and they did.

(steady music) - [Kathy] So they bought four properties on the corner of Second and State Street, and started the process of hiring an architect.

- [Diana] The architect was chosen as a result of an architectural competition.

There were five firms that were invited to submit drawings.

The winner of that competition was George B. Post.

He was, at the time, only 33 years old when he designed this.

And he probably had an advantage in that he could meet the bank's budget.

But he also had another really important advantage, which was that he was already in Troy, although he was a New York City architect, working on the hall building at exactly the same time as the competition.

(upbeat classical music) - [Kathy] This was a five year, half a million dollar project finished in 1875.

And it just changed the whole street.

I mean, you have this, you know, these wonderful brownstones and of course our Cluid house and the castle.

And then now you've got this enormous bow arts building.

We had, in Troy, many other smaller theaters and halls, but the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, this was a showpiece for sure.

(bright classical music) The building looks so huge when you look at it from the outside, but when you're in the space, it is intimate.

- [David] I have a lot of friends who come through or family come through and come to the hall and they're invariably mesmerized by the physicality of the hall.

I must say, the thing that I love the most is seeing the famous composers' names on the ceiling and then on the doors of all the boxes.

(upbeat classical music) - [Jon] The opening night concert was on April 19th, 1875.

It must have been awe inspiring to all who came.

And I know it was a big point of pride for the bank.

- [David] And Theodore Thomas, of course, was a German born conductor who really became the kind of preeminent American conductor of that era.

He was invited to Chicago, I think in the 1890s, and became the founder of the Chicago Symphony.

So a really important figure in the fact that he was there with his orchestra, of the Thomas Orchestra, to open the hall.

Suggests that Troy at that time really was a major industrial center and a very, very wealthy town.

(bright classical music) I came to the capital region from Los Angeles, California, where I actually was born and raised.

And then I went off to college and came back to be the assistant of the Philharmonic there.

And so I was used to new venues and lots of multipurpose venues.

And when I came to the Capital Region and saw Albany and Troy and Saratoga and all the related towns, I was so struck by the richness of the history of the place, and nowhere more so than when I first stepped into the hall and that it just breathes history.

(bright classical music) - It's been a remarkable who's who of 19th, 20th, and 21st century artists who've played on the stage.

Sergei Rachmaninoff, Vladimir Horowitz, Yehudi Menuhin, Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Reiner.

It's just amazing.

Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Crawl, Dave Brubeck.

- [David] There is a beautiful mural.

And on the bottom of the mural, she has all the different musicians that played there, - Many of whom were presented by Troy Chromatic concerts.

- [Kathy] The Troy Chromatic Organization, which this was a subscription music series, is still going on today.

Their first ones were 1894, and they would bring in orchestras and performers from around the world.

- Sometimes your favorite concert is just something that is sort of going to be a once in a lifetime experience.

And one was hearing the Kirov Orchestra with Gergiev conducting in the hall.

It turned out that they were playing in Carnegie Hall, and so this would be, in a sense, a full rehearsal concert for them.

(upbeat classical music) They arrived sort of midday, and they spent the entire afternoon, Gergiev put them through an entire afternoon of rehearsals.

And then there was a break, and then the evening concert.

But it was phenomenal.

It was absolutely a phenomenal concert.

(bright classical music) - I went to a Steven Isserlis recital, just cello and piano, earlier this season.

He, I think, is one of the greatest cellists in the world and certainly one of the most expressive and aware stylists in the world of string playing.

- I love the thought that Rachmaninoff was here.

Horowitz, Toscanini, all that, but especially Rachmaninoff somehow, 'cause I love his music and the thought that he was here, and thought you're sitting in a dressing room, Rachmaninoff sat there, probably scowling at the mirror and sort of growling when they called him to go on stage.

I love that thought.

And I'm following in his footsteps, which is a dream come true.

(audience applauding) - You know, you hear about all the artists, performers who have played there in the past 150 years.

I think I was just kind of overwhelmed both by the physical beauty of the hall, and then of course when I had the great privilege of performing in the hall.

I had never experienced an acoustic even remotely like that.

And I had conducted regularly at Carnegie Hall for the first, I think six years of my career.

I was the conductor of the New York Youth Symphony.

So that's one of the other great halls of America.

But I wasn't ready for the incredible immediacy of the sound in the Troy Music Hall.

(bright classical music) Rachmaninoff, of course, played there many times.

The great conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell in the 50s and 60s, he insisted whenever the Cleveland Orchestra made a tour of the Eastern United States, that they play in the Troy Music Hall because he wanted the Cleveland Orchestra musicians, arguably the greatest musicians in America, to experience the beauty, the acoustical beauty of the Hall.

Metropolis, the great conductor of the New York Philharmonic, said he'd play there for free 'cause he just was so impressed by the sound of it.

Everyone was just overwhelmed by the uniqueness of the sound of the music hall.

(bright classical music) The relationship the Albany Symphony has to the Troy Music Hall is that we play at least half, and sometimes more than half of our annual subscription concerts in the hall, and have done so for the past, well, many, many decades.

Long before I came, the orchestra was already playing in the hall.

And it's one of the great things about the Albany Symphony that you can hear us in that legendary space.

I always have the sense when I walk into this hall that I've walked a hundred years back into time.

I've stepped into a time warp.

But the acoustic is absolutely as remarkable as everyone says it is.

I have the sense when I'm conducting sometimes that you can actually feel the wind blowing in your hair as the sound shoots out.

(vocalist singing) (bright classical music) - Very little has changed.

There was some roof work done and there's been some ceiling work done.

The ceiling was much more ornate.

(vocalist singing) - And it's interesting, when it was completed in 1875, some of the earlier articles that were written in the paper, they went, "Oh, it's a beautiful hall and it's amazing, but the acoustics are a little, eh."

(steady classical music) - I think the biggest change that's visible to the public is a new cove that was put over the stage when we purchased the pipe organ in 1890.

- [Kathy] And some people think that because of the way the organ was built and the way the pipes are, that somehow it makes this music, the sound carry through the stage.

So after that, you start seeing the reviews and the newspapers about the amazing acoustics.

(steady classical music) - [Jessica] The Troy Savings Bank purchased the organ from a gentleman in Manhattan.

It was actually installed in his apartment townhouse.

I don't know about you, but I cannot fit an organ in my townhouse.

The Odell Organ is one of, you know, between 13, 15, somewhere around there, Odell Organs from the 19th century in the country.

The organ, since 2006, has been in a partial state of performance readiness.

The National Organ Society at that time had provided us a grant to actually repair the organ with the money that they could provide to make it at least somewhat playable.

My understanding is that it was near not playable for quite some time since the mid 80s.

(steady classical music) - The organ today is in need of some work.

We're hoping to do that at some point.

It's not in our scope right now, but it is sort of functional, but it is not in concert condition.

- It will require a restoration.

That is that icing on the cake that we need to make of this hall, just phenomenal.

(choir singing) I came here about 11 years ago for an interview and audition with Albany Pro Musica, and a board member took me to see the hall.

I was first impressed with the beauty of the hall.

When I entered, I thought I was in Vienna.

The next thing that I did was to play the piano a little bit and then of course, I could witness the kind of resonance, the acoustics that the hall has.

And my first reaction at the time was, "Why are we not performing here all the time?"

And that is precisely what followed.

(choir singing) Albany Pro Musica is the chorus in residence at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.

(choir singing) As an organist, I am biased when I say that part of the beauty of that hall is the beauty of the organ facade.

It is said that for the organ, the best stop, which is what you pull for the sound, is the acoustics.

A good organ will not sound great in a poor acoustic.

The human voice is very similar to the organ.

In the pipe organ, the sound comes through the wind in those pipes.

Our voices, of course, sustained by the air that we breathe.

The acoustics at the hall makes a huge difference and makes our sound really elegant and spectacular.

(choir singing) There's sort of things that I remember, of course.

One is the Bach B minor mass.

(choir singing) (bright classical music) I never forget the faces of the instruments.

You see, we brought instrumentalists from hair and hide in society in Boston.

This is some of the best musicians in the nation.

They're used to playing great, great places.

And I remember their faces when they first started playing at the hall, and there was one of them who was there like a little boy, just observing, almost starting to see the sound.

(choir singing) (bright classical music) It's not just a building.

It is a witness to all this music.

And it is such a privilege to be part of that history of that journey.

(bright classical music) - [Ning] Before 1900, the science of concert hall acoustics was not yet established.

- [Jon] Ning is a wonderful man, and a very knowledgeable acoustician who teaches at RPI, and he brings his class down at least once a year and they take measurements and do experiments in the hall.

- [Oscar] We are measuring the sound characteristics of that music hall.

And the way that we're choosing to do it right now is by using a pink log sweep.

So what it does essentially is it covers from the lowest frequencies all the way to the highest ones that we're interested in.

So it blasts that into the room.

And then we use four microphones to measure the response of the room in a specific seat.

And we're measuring a whole bunch of different seats.

(bright classical music) - [Ning] We always say, the Boston Symphony Hall was built according to learned theory.

So 1875, the Troy Music Hall was not that case.

There was no actually systematic knowledge to guide us to build.

And it happened like that.

So the architects say, "Hey, we build like this."

So the important aspect of the Troy Music Hall is so-called shoebox shape.

A rectangular enclosure.

Exactly that space or that volume is just about right.

And that is amazing.

(bright classical music) - One of the things that Troy Bank is really well known for is that it has like the sweet spot of reverberation time.

So it's about how much the sound like stays in the room, sound energy stays in the room.

It's about like a two second period of time for the sound to die, which means that the blend for musical performance of all of the instruments is really good.

So far from being in here, it seems like there's fairly good clarity of speech, which is another one that's really hard to hit when you also have really good reverb time.

- [Ning] After Troy Music Hall, maybe Carnegie Hall in New York City and also a couple of years later in Boston, Symphony Hall.

And these halls are very profound start in US.

And if you want to trace the history, maybe you'll find some old halls but they're not comparable to halls like these three halls.

(bright classical music) - I always say it's one of the four or five best acoustical spaces in America, but I think it may actually be the best.

Actually, I brought you a quote, 'cause I thought you should know this.

You may have already seen it, but here's the quote.

It's a newspaper quote.

"Every musician who has ever played there claims the music hall is the best acoustic installation in America, and possibly the world."

And that's Harold Schonberg, writing in the New York Times in 1971, at a time when they were thinking of pulling down the Troy Music Hall.

(upbeat classical music) - The music hall, like many things, particularly in the 1960s, that was a time of urban renewal.

It was a time we were really trying to reinvent ourselves.

You've got these 19th century cities that things were sometimes looking a little dingy.

One of the earlier bank presidents wanted to take that beautiful vaulted roof off and put a square roof and put a restaurant or something up there.

I mean, I think they were always trying ways to, you know, make the building work.

There was enough outcry from the city and from the people who support the music hall that they squelched any of those ideas.

- [Jon] When Dan Hogarty became president of the Troy Savings Bank, he really appreciated the intention that the bank had at that time of creating and providing this beautiful hall to the community.

And I think it was his dedication to preserving that, that has allowed us to continue to operate.

- Someday, somebody else would want to own the Troy Savings Bank, which I had to, you know, incorporate into my thinking.

The successor, the acquirer, they may not have the same interest in the musical hall that I did.

- [Jon] When it came time for the bank to go public, Dan made the decision to create a condominium structure for the building, separating the music hall from the banking portion.

- So that if someone acquired the bank, they get the bank building, but they don't get the music hall.

- And I think many ways, he was most responsible for ensuring that it lives today.

(upbeat classical music) Renaissance 150 celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Troy Savings Bank building.

As a part of that, we've engaged in this massive capital project to introduce air conditioning into the music hall, which we'd never had before.

And it will allow us to operate year round, which is transformational for our organization.

We've taken great care so that you really won't notice.

(upbeat classical music) It's running right now, and I can't hear it and you can't hear it.

So seems to be quite successful.

- [Jessica] As a part of celebrating 150 years and looking for 150 more in the future, we're reactivating the first floor of our building, the former Troy Savings Bank.

That new space will be titled, the Capital Region Music Hub.

(upbeat classical music) It will be a secondary performance space.

There will also be classrooms and spaces where folks can connect, can gather, and can learn.

(bright classical music) - [Jon] It's been quite a road that we've been down.

It's been an extremely challenging road from an engineering and construction standpoint, but we have a terrific team that has worked on this and we're so thankful to them.

This opening is, it just means the world to everyone.

(audience applauding) - When you preserve a space like this, you're making a huge statement.

And when you bring new generations to be part of performances there, the impact is enormous.

- [Diana] The savings bank built a building that was much larger than what they needed, but it had a very important civic function.

So it's important to make this available to future generations.

- I've been in every possible kind of venue and acoustical space, but when I come home to the Troy Music Hall, I remember how fortunate we are here in the capital region to have one of the greatest acoustical venues in the world.

(bright classical music) - [Kathy] For a city that's really a small city, to have something like Detroit Savings Bank Music Hall here is really, it's a national treasure, and we're proud to have it here.

(bright classical music) - Located in Albany, New York, the American Institute of Architects New York State is the voice of the architectural community, and a resource for its members in service to society.

For more information, aianys.org.

- [Narrator] Architecture plus, an architectural firm with over 40 years of experience in designing mental and behavioral health facilities across North America.

More information is available at aplususa.com.

What does retirement mean to you?

Travel, time with your family, serving the community?

Fagan Associates has been providing financial planning, wealth management, and investment advice for over 30 years to the Capital region.

Located in Troy, New York.

- [Narrator 2] The Troy Savings Bank Charitable Foundation is the community legacy of the former Troy Savings Bank.

A proud supporter of Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, the Troy Savings Bank Charitable Foundation is committed to building stronger, healthier, and more vibrant communities.