Casals Forum, Concert hall at Kronberg im Taunus, Germany

Casals Forum is the Kronberg Academy's chamber music hall, designed by Volker Staab with acoustician Martijn Vercammen. Its main auditorium seats 550, the Carl Bechstein Saal 150, plus a small recital room for 50 and a study centre. The hall's convex and concave walls are clad in light wood, and fanned glass fronts open the foyer to the park.

The Kronberg Academy, teaching string players since 1993, built the hall as its own venue; the cornerstone was laid on 1 October 2017. It opened on 23 September 2022 with a festival of 24 concerts, attended by Hesse's arts minister Angela Dorn. Costs of about €60 million were mostly raised from private sponsors, with support from Kronberg, the Hochtaunuskreis, Hesse and the federal government.

The forum is named after Catalan cellist Pablo Casals, a model of musicianship and humanity for the academy since its first cello festival in 1993, held on the 20th anniversary of his death. His widow, Marta Casals Istomin, remains patron of that event. The building also displays sculptures and installations by Tony Cragg, Antoni Tàpies, Karin Sander and Studio Drift, plus a bust of Casals by Robert Berks.

The Casals Forum stands between Victoriapark and Kronberg station, the terminus of Frankfurt S-Bahn line S4, so arrivals by train are direct. The complex holds the 550-seat main hall, the 150-seat Carl Bechstein Saal and a small pre-concert room for up to 50 listeners. The building is also rented to outside organisers; the Deutscher Pianistenpreis was held there in 2022 and 2023.

The hall's convex and concave walls, requested by acoustician Martijn Vercammen, are clad in light-brown wood. After the first rehearsal musicians said it felt and sounded as if they were playing inside a violin. The building was chosen as one of 26 best completed in Germany in 2022.