Sofiensaal

Austrian concert hall and recording venue in Vienna. It opened in 1826 and was designed by the architects August Sicard and Eduard van der Nüll. It was severely damaged by a fire on 16 August 2001. The building's large, vaulted ceiling, and the pool beneath the floor, gives the hall excellent acoustic properties. For this reason, Decca Records adopted the building as its principal European recording venue from 1950, mono recording and 1955, stereo recording to the mid-1980s. The senior producer of classical recordings for the company for much of this time was John Culshaw, who revolutionised the recording of classical music, particularly opera with the Decca tree. Notable recordings made at the Sofiensaal during this period included the first complete studio recording of Wagner's Ring Cycle, conducted by George Solti. In the years before the fire, the Sofiensaal fell into disuse as a recording studio and was used for parties and discos. The last recording made there before the fire, in July 2001, was of Arcadi Volodos playing solo piano works by Franz Schubert. The fire burned for more than eight hours and completely destroyed the main ballroom, although the facade and walls of the building survived. Some of the decorative stucco work on the walls survived the fire. The historic ballroom and listed historical façade was rebuilt and finally reopened in December 2013, along with surrounding areas created for apartments, a hotel, a catering company, a fitness studio, and various function rooms.