BERLIN — Firefighters on Tuesday battled a blaze below the roof of the Berlin Philharmonic's home that sent a plume of acrid gray smoke pouring from the crest of the famed 1960s building and had musicians rushing to save their instruments.
The blaze broke out beneath the roof of the building over the main concert hall, which seats 2,440 and is famed for its extraordinary acoustics. Officials said there were no injuries.
Police spokeswoman Heike Nagora said that welding work had been carried out on the building's tin roof earlier in the day, and police were investigating that as a possible cause.
Senior fire officer Karsten Goewecke said the first call alerting officers to the fire came at 1:57 p.m. Firefighters then cut open parts of the tent-shaped roof, some 160 feet above the ground, to get at the fire.
"We know where it is burning" — in an interior area between the insulated ceiling and the metal skin of the roof — Goewecke said. He added that he believed a combination of roof materials such as insulation, wood and tar paper was on fire. A room containing technical equipment is located beneath the spot.
The cloud of smoke, which was visible from far away shortly after the fire broke out, diminished significantly during the afternoon. The capital's fire service declared the fire to be under control shortly after 7 p.m.
The fire broke out around the time a lunchtime concert in the building's ground-floor foyer was letting out and an hour before 700 people were due to start rehearsing Hector Berlioz' "Te Deum" for a series of weekend concerts being directed by Claudio Abbado, the orchestra's former chief conductor.
"Thank God the fire broke out earlier," said Pamela Rosenberg, the orchestra's general manager.
That's the home of one of the premier orchestras in the world. The losses just to the instruments would have been devastating if they hadn't gotten that under control.
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