Berlin  - Berlin firefighters have put out a fire in the city's iconic Philharmonie, the concert hall that is home to the Berlin Philharmonic, a fire services spokesman said Wednesday.

Fire officers were continuing to mount a watch in the roof of the asymmetrical golden building to ensure that the fire, which burnt for more than 12 hours after being detected at 2 pm Tuesday, did not break out again, he said.

A Philharmonie spokesman said concerts there would be cancelled for the foreseeable future while the structure of the concrete building was examined for lasting damage.

An initial assessment suggested that while the fire had damaged some 1,600 square metres of the irregular, tent-shaped metal roof, the concert hall itself was undamaged under its concrete ceiling.

Berlin Fire Chief Wilfried Graefling said Tuesday the fire had broken out while repairs to the 50-metre-high roof were being carried out.

By Tuesday evening, a pall of brown smoke hung over the area close to Berlin's central Tiergarten park as hundreds of firefighters battled the smouldering fire.

Musicians evacuated expensive instruments from the building, which also houses a musical instrument museum.

The fire alert began only an hour before the famous orchestra, an adult choir and 400 children, were to have begun a joint rehearsal for a concert to take place Friday night.

The building was cleared and nobody was injured.

Firefighters spent hours ripping off parts of the golden sheet- metal roof to gain access to burning insulation.

The hall's chief executive, Pamela Rosenberg, said Claudio Abbado, who retired as conductor of the orchestra in 2002, had been in the building at the time the blaze began, preparing for a comeback programme from Friday to Sunday.

Sir Simon Rattle, the orchestra's regular conductor, was in France, she added.

The 2,200-seat building, designed by Hans Scharoun, opened in 1963 on the West Berlin side of the Berlin Wall to house one of the world's best known orchestras. (dpa)