On Wednesday, the Elbphilharmonie building will open in Hamburg

Berlin - In the presence of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck, the Elbphilharmonie building in Hamburg will be ceremonially opened on Wednesday evening, which is set to become a new landmark of this port metropolis. This year's program aims to make the philharmonic, with a roof reminiscent of the tumultuous surface of the North Sea, a global center for top-class music.

The Elbphilharmonie will officially open with a concert by the NDR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock, taking listeners on a musical journey from the Renaissance to the present day. The ceremonial guests and hundreds of randomly selected audience members from the public will hear works by Beethoven, Wagner, and Cavalieri, among others.

The following three-week festival will also have a packed program, featuring the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Muti, among others. Past loud controversies surrounding the construction, which significantly exceeded the original budget and was delayed, may be forgotten in the coming months due to performances by the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, which are among the world's best.

However, commentary on the opening of the Elbphilharmonie will likely always include mentions that it was originally supposed to cost 77 million euros (two billion crowns), but ultimately turned out to be approximately ten times more expensive. The costs amounted to 789 million euros (21.3 billion crowns). It will also be mentioned that construction, which began in 2007, was complicated by delays and a multi-year legal dispute, causing it not to be completed in 2010 as originally planned, but only last year.

Nonetheless, the result is deemed worthwhile by Hamburg's Mayor Olaf Scholz, who believes it has the potential to excite the world. "The decision by Hamburg to build the Elbphilharmonie was the right choice," he said at the end of last year when handing over the building to the city. The Mayor considers the building, designed by architects from the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron and divided into three levels, to be fascinating. The Elbphilharmonie, located in the heart of the old Hamburg port, also offers one of the best concert halls in the world, according to him.

Several months before this hall is presented to the public on Wednesday, people had the opportunity to visit an observation platform located between the original warehouse building and the extension with a pair of concert halls. At 37 meters above the ground, it offers visitors a view of the harbor and the city for two euros (54 crowns).

The building, which is over 100 meters long and 110 meters tall at its highest point, also includes a hotel with 244 rooms, 44 private apartments, more than 500 parking spaces, and smaller concert halls or restaurants. According to the builders, the 82-meter-long curved escalators that transport visitors into the heart of the building are also unique.

The main concert hall itself accommodates 2,100 listeners, none of whom sit further than 30 meters from the conductor. In the white hall, with rapidly ascending rows of gray upholstered seats, there are also organs with a total of 4,765 pipes. Thanks to double soundproofing, specially curved walls, and a ring under the ceiling that reflects sound back into the hall, the acoustics are expected to be of the highest level. "If the hall sounds at least half as good as it looks, then the Elbphilharmonie will be unbeatable," believes the local artistic director Christoph Lieben-Seutter.