Festhalle – Viersen

In 1955 the journal Baukunst und Werkform asked twenty conductors to name the best-sounding halls they knew. Two German rooms made the list, and one of them was in Viersen, a Lower Rhine town of no great size. The Festhalle had been built in 1913 to designs by the municipal architect Eugen Frielingsdorf — columns, pilasters and pediments in a late classicising manner, seating about a thousand. Furtwängler and Karajan both conducted there. The acoustic has since made it a favoured room for recording, and each year it houses the international Viersen Jazz Festival.