Chamber Music Wonderland (2017)

Chamber Music Wonderland takes viewers on a fascinating musical voyage, accompanying a group of musicians who set up their own music festival to showcase the very best of 500 years of musical history. Avoiding a narrator, the film allows the protagonists the time to explain how they became musicians and what fascinates them about their profession, giving a lot of space to the music which is performed in the baroque splendor of a monastery in Western Austria. In Chamber Music Wonderland, director Emanuel Altenburger accompanies a group of musicians who set up the "OBERTÖNE" (Overtones) music festival, an event that follows its own rules. Not bound by any dogmatic adherence to a particular style or epoch, the festival covers some 500 years of musical tradition, from the baroque sonatas of Dietrich Buxtehude, to the passionate tango arrangements of Astor Piazzolla. Led by the strong will to perform only the best pieces and connect audiences with new composers, the international group of musicians chose the baroque splendor of the Stams monastery in the Tyrol region of Western Austria for their annual festival. Altenburger, who accompanied the musicians throughout the rehearsing stage and the buildup towards the event's 2016 edition, seeks to delve further into the ensemble's diverse backgrounds. He examines what drove them to become musicians and what motivates them in their profession. By avoiding an independent narrator, Altenburger allows the musicians to tell their story and lets the music speak for itself, taking the viewer past seemingly random pieces of music which come together to create a fascinating musical voyage.