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Sibelius's Finlandia opens the Music Centre's first concert on Tuesday.
After twenty years of planning and several years of building, the Centre is finally ready.
The heart of the building is the main concert hall.
What is a bit unusual is that the stage is in the middle and the audience sits all around the orchestra.
This ensemble from the Hesinki Philharmonic Orchestra rehearses for the Helsinki Festival.
The acoustics receive a lot of praise.
John Storgårds: It has everything that an acoustically fantastic hall should have.
The reverb is ideal, neither too long nor too short.
It doesn't matter where you sit, you hear everything equally well and equally completely at all seats.
From a musicians point of view, it feels very good on the stage.
Everyone can hear each other well.
There are no problems of that sort, which can sometimes happen also in good halls.
Journalist: Apart from orchestra rehearsals, a recording has already been made here.
The hall has been designed to be completely isolated from the ground,
but those with trained ears have been able to hear the city outside.
John Storgårds: There was something so heavily piercing going on on the street outside
that just a little hint of it could be heard inside during the recording session.
Journalist: This Romantic period organ was bought used from England.
Tuning the pipes takes a couple of weeks.
When the organ hall is complete, it will have three organs and the acoustics should resemble a cathedral.
The organ hall is one of the Music Centre's four smaller concert venues.
On these floors, the Sibelius Academy has moved in.
First-year students are taking a tour and learning to find their way in the building.
Gustav Djupsjöbacka: This is a fantastic building.
It's quiet even though it sits in the middle of Helsinki.
New rooms are of course always fine, but the most impressive are the concert halls and
how purposefully they are built.
They sound so very fine and they give us great opportunities.
Journalist: The Music Centre still hasn't solved Sibelius Academy's lack of practice rooms.
For budget reasons, one floor of the Academy part of the building was shaved off in planning.
The problem of insufficient space remains.
Gustav Djupsjöbacka: As a result of moving to this location, we are more tightly knit together.
We have to raise the usage rate of the classrooms, and that will create certain problems.
Journalist: Over a thousand pieces of polished steel have been joined together to make this giant sculpture 'Kaiku' ('Echo').
The artist is Kirsi Kaulanen.
The sculpture is ten meters tall and it will be suspended from the ceiling of the foyer.
Alma Media corporation has started to build its headquarters a stone's throw away from the Music Centre.
The entire Töölö Bay area is being transformed.
In place of the undeveloped no-man's land, planning is underway for office buildings, a new city library,
an underground parking structure and a multi-purpose activity centre, and several parks.
Kajsa Lybeck: The view from the Music Centre's foyer will be very different.
We won't see the busy bus traffic or the trains any more.
Instead, there will be a park surrounded by buildings.
Later, modern pavilions will be built in the park.
Journalist: Before the Music Centre, the VR railway warehouses stood on the site.
They were destroyed in a fire in May 2006.
Initially there were plans to make use of the ruins.
They have proved to be in such a poor state that they will likely be demolished completely.
The plans for a dance pavilion have also been abandoned.
The Music Centre was met with a lot of opposition when construction started.
Now the critics have been relatively quiet.
John Storgårds: This has turned into something positive from something that was problematic in the beginning.
Regardless of whether one is a concert-goer or not,
everyone has noticed that something has been accomplished here, and that it has been done well.