Better with age

Few people seem to know that the distinctive Flagey building once housed Belgium’s national broadcaster. It was built explicitly for the purpose, in fact, exactly 75 years ago.

The Nationaal Instituut voor de Radio-omroep (NIR), was Belgium’s answer to the BBC. It saw the light of day on 18 June, 1930. The fledgling broadcaster didn’t have appropriate housing from which to transmit, so in 1933 a competition was organised. It was won by Brussels architect Joseph Diongre, who designed a modernist building reminiscent of an ocean liner or a mail steamer. Construction took three years, and, once finished in 1938, it was one of the first broadcasting buildings in Europe.

The emphasis was on usability, and Diongre had furniture built that was tailor-made for the place. The building and its interior immediately won international acclaim because of its technical and acoustic qualities and attracted prominent musicians from all over the world.

At the same time, Flagey housed the broadcaster’s many orchestras and choirs, including the showpiece Great Symphony Orchestra of the NIR. It had an excellent reputation in the field of contemporary music and performed premieres of works by composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók and Arthur Honegger.

In 1937, the NIR was split up into a Dutch-speaking and a French-speaking branch, but both remained in Flagey. During the Second World War, the Germans took hold of the building and used it for their own broadcasting purposes.

Moving on and out

With the arrival of public television in 1953, the multiplication of services and personnel became too much for the original design of Flagey, and gradually everything related to television was moved to different locations. In the meantime, the federalisation of Belgium began to take shape. What had begun as appeasement for diverging regionalist tendencies within the kingdom became an irreversible process of constitutional reform.

This also affected the NIR, which was officially disbanded and replaced by two co-existing but mutually independent organisations, the Belgische Radio en Televisie (BRT, later renamed VRT) for broadcasts in Dutch, and the Radio Television Belge (RTB, later renamed RTBF) for French-language broadcasts. The centrifugal forces also affected the Flagey building, and in 1974 both radio broadcasters slowly began leaving the building for the Reyers complex in Schaarbeek.

An array of cultural institutions set up shop in Flagey, but uncertainty as to its ultimate purpose remained. A long-term solution was badly needed as urgent repair works and structural restoration (such as the removal of asbestos) could not be addressed.

Saved from the bulldozer

Fortunately, the building was partially listed in 1994, so the notion of razing it to the ground – always an option in Brussels, where property development and politics are two branches of the same tree – was impossible. The biggest stumbling block in the dossier was Flagey’s highly symbolic nature. In a climate in which the national level was being stripped of ever more power and no single linguistic community wanted to invest in a “national” institution, Flagey seemed like a thing of the past.

In 1997, a working group was founded with prominent figures from the private and cultural sectors, including Flemish industrialist Piet Van Waeyenberge. They began elaborating a rescue plan, and a feasibility study was ordered. The resulting blueprint consisted of a complete renovation and a concept for a new cultural institution.

Restored to former glory

In due course, the working group got the go-ahead from the then owners, VRT and RTBF, and in 1998 the building was sold in its entirety to the public limited company Omroepgebouw/Maison de la Radio Flagey. The new company was established with a capital of €47 million, for which no fewer than 30 Belgian companies chipped in. That kind of “translinguistic” co-operation was a rare occurrence in those days and created quite a stir, as did the relative swiftness of the entire operation.

The renovation began with a view to creating a fully functional building and restoring the studios and concert halls to their former glory, but with the latest technology in acoustics design and noise control. The building reopened in 2002.

The new centre with the succinct name Flagey was multidisciplinary, with a strong emphasis on music but with a wider variety of musical expression (including jazz and world music). For the first time, the programming also took in the audio-visual arts, and Flagey developed a partnership with the city’s film museum Cinematek, which continues today. Flagey receives €2 million in government funding each year, divided between the Flemish and French-speaking Communities, the Brussels-Capital Region and the commune of Elsene.

Several orchestras like the Brussels Philharmonic and the Brussels Jazz Orchestra call Flagey home, but it also houses a host of other institutions and even a few commercial enterprises. On the top floor, various Flemish media have their offices: local channel TV Brussel, weekly paper Brussel Deze Week, radio station FM Brussel and the news site brusselnieuws.be.

However, nowadays Flagey does not belong to one specific community but caters to all who care for culture beyond boundaries.

www.flagey.be

75 years of top-class music

The opening event of the year-long Flagey 75 entails four fine musical evenings this week. The prize-winning pianist Till Fellner gives a recital on 23 January, Musiques Nouvelles plays music by Eleni Karaindrou (long-time collaborator of Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos) on 24 January, the Brussels Philharmonic pays homage to the Jazz Age on 25 January and Matthew Herbert swings with his Big Band on 26 January.

In February, a series of piano recitals emphasise the excellent acoustic qualities of Flagey’s concert halls and studios. What better way to appreciate the richness of a solo piano performance than by inviting some masters? Enfant terrible Ivo Pogorelich plays the romantic repertoire (Chopin and Liszt), while the adventurous Stephane Ginsburgh prefers the early 20th century (Prokofiev).

This month right through to April, the Brussels Philharmonic (pictured) feels right at home in a large-scale cycle dedicated to Stravinsky, that giant of modern music. They perform all his ground-breaking works, from The Firebird to Petrushka and the infamous Rite of Spring.

A special treat is the Phantom of Flagey (premiere 15 March), a documentary highlighting Flagey’s rich history, with treasures from its archives that are currently being digitalised.