"Ellie Hemskeerk was the carillon playing good soul. Now it's my job to make the chimes ring again."

Peter Robert Berry IV, owner of Zuort.

As early as 1911, the Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg had a chalet built next to the residential and farm buildings at Zuort, which was to serve as his future summer residence. In 1920, he was able to purchase the entire farm with its surrounding area from the Frigg family. Their nephew, Clot Corradin, served as tenant farmer for over ten years, but also as builder when Mengelberg decided to add a chapel to the hamlet. Raised in 1922 in block style, the chapel and its ornate interior with altar and pews are richly decorated. The work is completed in 1928.

As a unique ornament of the chapel, a carillon is built according to the Dutch model. It consists of a total of 15 bells of various sizes and tones: F4, Es4, D4, C#4, C4, H3, B3, A3, G#3, G3, F#3, F3, Es3, D3, C#3, which were cast by the company Rüetschi, Aarau, which is still active today. These bells were played via a heavy-action keyboard installed in a cabinet made of Swiss stone pine, also by Rüetschi - "as far as we know, a unique item", writes an author of the professional journal Campanae Helveticae in an essay in 2008.

During Mengelberg's lifetime and beyond until 1987, the carillon was played by Ellie Bysterus Hemskeerk, who served as first violinist in the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Mengelberg and frequently visited Zuort with the conductor. Even after his death in 1951, she looked after the house and farm, keeping up the tradition, while the Mengelberg Foundation - now the new owner of the hamlet - invited young musicians to the Lower Engadine.

When Peter Robert Berry IV, a retired doctor, acquired Zuort in 2010, he was keen to preserve this unique hamlet in perpetuity and, in particular, to let melodies from the carillon ring out in the valley again. To this end, the bells have been renovated, tuned, fitted with magnetic hammers and control electronics by FA Rüetschi since 2021. The carillon was thus mechatronically upgraded so that it can be controlled online and played directly with an e-piano. Various melodies – partly compositions by Mengelberg, but also works by other composers – are to be programmed in. A topping-out ceremony and vernissage are planned for the beginning of the summer at Zuort.