Music at the journey's end

"The concerts take place in a semiopen concert hall with only about 150 seats," says cellist Chen Yibai, who will perform throughout the festival. "In a traditional concert hall, almost every variable is controlled. Here, almost nothing is. A breeze may drift through a quiet passage. Rain may arrive unexpectedly. Evening birds may answer the music."

Chen, who won second prize at Belgium's Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2022, has performed at festivals around the world.

He vividly remembers an open-air concert in Germany about five years ago when a sudden downpour interrupted the performance. The audience stayed. Some sheltered beneath jackets, while others closed their eyes and listened.

The musicians covered their instruments beneath a small canopy as rain merged with the sound of the piano.

"It was unlike anything I'd ever experienced," Chen says. "It changed the way I thought about music."

Long before the festival took shape, its organizers visited the Chapel of Sound to test its acoustics. A cellist stood alone on the stage, and the organizers listened.

The hall exceeded their expectations. Yet, it was more than the acoustics that impressed them.

"You hear the wind moving through the valley. You hear insects. Nature becomes part of the performance," Chen says.

"The architecture embraces rather than competes with the landscape," adds Zhou Shilei, executive director of the festival. "A simple square platform is carved into the sloping ground, anchoring the building within the valley. Every opening, although seemingly spontaneous, has been precisely calculated to balance acoustics, structure, daylight and the surrounding scenery."

The valley itself completes the design.

Behind the building, a gently rising grassy slope forms a natural amphitheater for an outdoor stage. Inside, daylight pours through irregular skylights as the auditorium rises with the mountainside. Positioned openings disperse sound naturally, allowing voices and instruments to resonate while remaining connected to the landscape beyond.

Appropriately, chamber music lies at the heart of the festival.

For Chen, it represents music-making in its purest form.

"A solo performance can be lonely," he says. "Concertos involve enormous pressure because everything has to come together after rehearsals with the orchestra."