Lukaskirche, Dresden

This is the Lukaskirche in Dresden. An art nouveau church a couple of kilometers or so from the centre of the city. It was more or less at the boundary of the area obliterated in the bombing of the old city in 1945. Its interior decoration and furnishings were destroyed, as were parts of the exterior, as the picture shows. Not long after the war it was converted into a recording studio, other venues having been destroyed. The church has side rooms that are ideal for a control room and storage, and wood panelling provides a versatile acoustic for recordings and concerts. There are galleries, which were used by Karajan to disperse the chorus in parts of his Mastersingers recording. For a while it seemed likely that the church would be given up by the protestant congregation and given full time to the recording companies, but it is still in use as a church today. Numerous famous post-war recordings were made here, including the Janowski Wagner Ring, Karajan Mastersingers, Sawallisch Schumann symphonies, and many more. The interior is not vast, so a full orchestra and chorus must have pretty well filled it out. I sometimes feel that the recordings reflect the size constraints, especially in the Ring, but some of them sound excellent, so perhaps I'm wrong. Next door is a ruin, presumably the church house or other associated building. The rest of the area has been rebuilt or survived. Other venues used in the post-war years in Dresden include the Kreuzkirche and Hygiene Museum. Now the Staatskapelle records in the restored Semperoper and, given the decline of the classical recording industry, the Lukaskirche probably finds itself less in demand now than in the 1970s.