Palais des Fêtes

This guide to the Palais des Fêtes in Strasbourg opens in 1909 with a young Albert Schweitzer pressing his ear to an organ pipe, arguing with its builders over how the instrument inside this hall should sound. You'll hear about his campaign against what he called the industrial organ, and how the Dalstein and Haerpfer workshop voiced this one pipe by pipe instead of by factory chart. The guide also traces the building itself back to 1903, when architects Joseph Muller and Richard Kuder raised it in radical new reinforced concrete behind its neo-Gothic turret, and follows the hall forward to the conductors, including Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, who later worked inside it.