Sounds of the Universe

Forty years after its founding, the International Baroque Days Melk Abbey are among the most renowned early music festivals in the world. The documentary tells of the unique bond between festival and abbey: here a modern music and cultural enterprise meets the centuries-old religious life and the sound space of the monastery, marked by spiritual serenity and by human and intellectual openness.

The early years bear the signature of Helmut Pilss, who founded the Pentecost concerts in 1979 to support the urgently needed restoration of the abbey church. Under Alexander Hauer the festival, devoted entirely to early music since the early 1990s, established itself on the international festival scene; since 2014 the tenor Michael Schade has shaped the programme as artistic director.

With these three personalities and many companions – among them Abbot Georg Wilfinger, former Abbot Burkhard Ellegast, the conductors Stefan Gottfried and Rubén Dubrovsky, René Clemencic and Eduardo López Banzo – the film travels from the present back to the beginnings of the Pentecost concerts, with many an unexpected look behind the scenes.