Melbourne Recital Centre has been designed as a lively hub providing much needed resources for musicians and audiences alike.  Industry consultation identified the need for a beautiful smaller space that is accessible, flexible and affordable for smaller concerts and recording.

Ian McDougall, Principal Architect on the Melbourne Recital Centre Project writes:

”In the 1997 rebuilding of the incinerated La Fenice, Venice, the architect for the project Aldo Rossi introduced a second performance space to the 200 year old building to accommodate smaller ensembles and as a space for entertaining. In the Melbourne Recital Centre, the inclusion of a space for smaller performances and newer music, recording, pre-concert events and other functions, is not an addition but a key to the mission of the new Centre. It is a performance space in its own right with its own design, acoustic and presence in the Centre.

The space has been conceived as an acoustic volume, tall and rectangular – approximately 16m x 10m x 9m - a flexible acoustic box that can seat 150 people and a grand piano and cellist on stage. Or a 190 people at a concert launch. Or 120 people in the round with an ensemble on a centre stage. It is a type of space that relates to the tradition of music chambers such as the Esterhaza music hall.

The Salon is a contemporary space with a fully flexible lighting grid across the entire ceiling, providing the widest range of theatrical lighting options for the widest range of performance and event modes. It is located directly off the main foyer, at ground level and adjacent to practice/education spaces, recording and soloist rooms.

It is an individual space but also a companion room to the auditorium; it too is a timber lined space.  It has been designed using a series of randomized diffusing panels, tessellated plywood faces tipped in and out to form a modulated wall and ceiling, an all-over treatment responding to the desired acoustic performance for the space.

Across this plywood surface, we have inscribed a section of graphic score, a series of lyrical lines that link writing, music and ornament in an historic moment. This performance space will play an important role in the educational mission of the Centre, and in the sponsorship of new music, of the avant-garde and contemporary performance. The use of the graphic score represents the bridging point in Australian, and indeed international, music in the 20th century. Graphic scores by pioneers such as Melbournian Percy Grainger, and later Cage, Stockhausen and Sculthorpe, allow experimentation in classical music through expansion of notation and interpretation of the score. This exploration fostered and unlocked aspects of music that occur in folk, ethnic and jazz music, expanding the palette of serious music. Our graffiti, the meandering lines and text cut into the plywood, is homage to the spirit of exploration in contemporary music.