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The Moscow International Performing Arts Centre was officially opened on September 28, 2003 with the debut of a new orchestra, the National Philharmonic of Russia under musical director Vladimir Spivakov. Also known as the Moscow International House of Music (Dom Muzyki), it is situated on the Kosmodamianskaya Embankment off the Garden Ring Road.The architects were Yury Gnedovsky, Vladilen Krasilnikov, Dmitry Solopov, Margarita Gavrilova, and Sergey Gnedovsky of Krasniye Kholmy Russian Cultural-business Centre and Tovarishestvo Teatralniy Arkhitekturov. The project won the Khrustalny Dedal architectural award at the XI All-Russian Zodchestvo festival. The first stone was laid on September 7, 2000 by Spivakov and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov. The Turkish firm Enka Insaat ve Sanayi A.S. constructed the centre. The centre cost US$200 million to construct, and was financed entirely by the City of Moscow. It was the first classical music hall constructed in the city in over a century. It is part of a business and hotel complex called Riverside Towers, intended by the City to be its equivalent of Lincoln Center.The centre has a circular concert hall similar to the Philharmonie in Berlin. Seating is laid out on two principal levels, and arranged in various tiers that almost surround the stage. The hall is on the third storey, with promenade areas below. The auditorium seats 1,735, and is composed largely of Siberian larch wood, a blonde wood considered among the best for acoustics, with a light, airy look. The centre also houses a 575-seat chamber hall and a 532-seat theater. In addition to the three concert venues, it also has sound studio, a rehearsal hall, an audio-video complex, an exhibition hall, a hall of light, music rooms, the Allegro restaurant, a Bluthner music room, a summer patio called the Music Terrace and another concert hall that seats 120. The modernistic, cylindrical glass and steel centre is topped by an enormous, 9.5 metre-tall, 2 metric-ton treble clef covered in mozaic gold that rotates like a weathervane, designed by sculptor Zurab Tsereteli.
