Graindelavoix

The ensemble around music researcher and vocal specialist Björn Schmelzer is also known for spectacular performances in which Graindelavoix stages the music theatrically and maximally explores the sound potential of churches, museums or concert halls (most recently also in 2021 at the Kampnagel Summer Festival). Accordingly, Brumel’s Mass in the Elbphilharmonie Grand Hall is also a theatrical staging that begins with a short documentary film from 1967 showing a ritual of believers in a stone cave in Abruzzo: an introduction to the visual and sonic universe of the rolling tombstone.

The 13-minute film is subtly accompanied by Portuguese avant-garde guitarist Manuel Mota, who also added arrangements for wind instruments to Brumel’s mass »Et ecce terrae motus« that follows and recomposed unreadable passages from the original score. The hypnotically flowing, polyphonic melodic lines of the twelve vocal parts combine with the four wind instruments and Mota’s smart extensions to create a concert event of existential force that unleashes the energy and imaginative power stored in the score – and at the same time also offers an impressive experience of Elbphilharmonie’s unique spatial sound.