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The unique sound of film music produced in Vienna

The top-flight Synchron Stage Vienna recording facility has made the Austrian capital a major destination for the international music and film industries.

© ADVANTAGE AUSTRIA
© ADVANTAGE AUSTRIA
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It’s a safe bet to call Vienna a city of music, and the capital is well known for its musicians, orchestras and concert halls – not to mention the New Year concert. Vienna is also in constant use as a backdrop for international film productions and – as few outside the sector may be aware – it is also the location of Synchron Stage Vienna, an extraordinary recording studio in which film scores and orchestral works are put down on tape.

The recording studio has had quite the eventful history – the site was once the location of the Rosenhügel film studio lot on which silent movies were made more than 100 years ago and the country’s first artificially illuminated studio space was to be found here in the 1920s, after which the area was adapted for the talkies. A dark era dawned in 1938 during which propaganda feature films promoting Nazi ideology were produced, and it was in this period that the Synchron studio was constructed as a room within a room, “floating” on joists and thus protected from any vibration or noise from outside. This ensured the unique acoustics of the hall – that have been preserved to this day.

The listed Synchron studio building was returned to its original purpose in 2013 when the facility was extended, modernised and fitted with cutting-edge technology, since which time the Vienna Synchron Stage studio has been lending its acoustics to moving pictures in particular.

The main room has space for 130 musicians and there are smaller recording booths in which individual instruments can be dubbed in. Network connection during an in-house recording session is of major importance, as is an integrated link with the client, who can be virtually present and listen in from anywhere in the world.

One of the trump cards a musical metropolis like Vienna has to offer is the enormous choice of excellent musicians that can be hired at short notice to sightread the score – as composers fully appreciate.

The studio’s first big success was “The Crown”, for which Rupert Gregson-Williams and Hans Zimmer put together the soundtrack. Zimmer was delighted with the results and immediately slotted in a follow-up project. The roster of films and series for which the music has been produced in Vienna is as varied as it is long, with even a blockbuster Marvel project about to be cued up.