Brigida González and I followed the renovation over two years: from the construction site through the different building phases to rehearsals and the first concerts in the reopened hall.

The film is built like a crescendo. While the music slowly builds like an orchestra tuning up, Brigida González’s construction photographs show the building coming together. Step by step, everything that makes a concert hall joins in: rehearsals, the moving stage, an audience filling the hall. It ends on the first great fortissimo of Beethoven’s Ninth, the moment the place becomes what it was built for.

The score is a new montage of fragments from the first and second movements, broken up by deliberate silences. The sheet music in the film is taken from the original score, and its red dots act as a conductor, announcing images and setting the rhythm.