Ruhrtriennale - Festival of the Arts

»Why, oh chaos, do you try to bring the world into disorder?« asks Love in Leonhard Lechner’s prophetic 24-part wedding song Quid, Chaos. Wherever the Huelgas Ensemble performs under Paul Van Nevel, acoustic spaces seem limitless and chaos is guided into ordered lines. Barbara Frey’s term as Artistic Director of the Ruhrtriennale opened in 2021 with a concert at dawn in Zeche Zweckel. Three years later, her artistic era reaches its conclusion with a nocturnal concert devoted purely to the human voice. The celebrated Belgian vocal ensemble – guests at the Ruhrtriennale once again after 2021 – opens almost otherworldly spheres of sound to the audience. In flowing, apparently never-ending harmonic developments, the art of polyphony is displayed in all its facets: ranging from Josquin Desprez’s Qui habitat, a supreme work of canonical composition, in which the 24 voices create a magical, hovering sound space, to a perpetuum mobile by Pieter Maessins and the sonic splendour of Robertus Wylkynson to the masterful counterpoint of Claudio Monteverdi.   The centrepiece of this journey through Renaissance polyphony is Antoine Brumel’s spectacular mass Et ecce terræ motus. Even at the time it was written, this work was famed for its remarkable boldness. Around the year 1500 Europe experienced a similarly radical shift in values to the present day. In his 12-part »Earthquake Mass« Brumel wrote a type of music of the future that outlines the vision of a better world. And ultimately Love in Lechner’s Quid, Chaos is persuaded to remain on Earth despite all the miseries the world must endure because there must always be a place for Love. 

Paul van Nevel - Huelgas Ensemble