Community Calendar

Enjoy a morning of organ music in the historic Carmel Mission Basilica. Performed by Andrew Arthur, the Festival’s Principal Organist and a member of the Artistic Leadership Team, this recital highlights the beauty of Bach’s works as well as works by Heinrich Scheidemann & Georg Böhm.

Step into Paris at the turn of the 18th century, when candlelit salons and royal courts were filled with elegant, expressive music. Works by François Couperin and Jean-Féry Rebel capture the refined beauty, rich harmonies, and vivid character of the French Baroque, offering a glimpse into the sound world of the city alive with new musical ideas.

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is a set of four violin concertos paired with short poems that describe the scenes each movement depicts: birds singing, dogs barking, storms breaking, and people celebrating. Vivaldi brings these images to life with musical details such as trills for birds, a repeating viola line for a dog, droning lines for Summer’s heat, and chattering teeth in Winter. The solo violin leads the story in each concerto, acting almost like a narrator. These concertos have captivated listeners for centuries and appear frequently in films, including The Four Seasons (1981) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019).

Handel’s Water Music was composed in 1717 for a royal barge trip on the Thames, performed outdoors for King George I as the boats traveled along the river. The suites include a series of dance movements for strings, horns, oboes, and bassoons, designed to carry across the water. Its lively rhythms and bright orchestration have made it one of Handel’s best-known works, and it has appeared in films such as Dead Poets Society (1989).

This concert features 19th-century works for fortepiano and mandolino by Beethoven, Hummel, Giuliani, and Carulli. The program highlights the interplay between the two instruments and the elegance of early Romantic chamber music.

The 1920s marked a decade of bold reinvention as composers responded to a rapidly changing world with wit, clarity, and new musical languages. Works by Poulenc, Martinů, and Stravinsky capture the energy of the era—from Parisian surrealism and jazz-inflected dance to the crisp lines of neoclassicism—revealing three distinct voices shaped by the same moment in history.

Baroque music forms the foundation of the Carmel Bach Festival, and this program honors that tradition. J.S. Bach’s Cantata No. 39, Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot, and Cantata No. 105, Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht, showcase his mastery of choruses, arias, and recitatives, blending intricate musical craft with profound spiritual and moral themes. Antonio Lotti’s Missa Sapientiae, a Venetian mass setting, pairs elegant polyphonic choruses with lyrical solo lines, exemplifying the devotional clarity and refinement of early 18th-century sacred music. Together, these works highlight the artistry and historical significance of the Baroque era.

Through these performances, we celebrate the composers and musical traditions that have shaped and continue to inspire the Carmel Bach Festival.

Held at Church in the Forest, a striking venue nestled among the cypress and pine trees of Pebble Beach, this concert features two landmark string quartets: Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 10, the “Harp,” and Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 1, a work that balances classical structure with Romantic intensity.

Set within the historic Carmel Mission, this choral concert highlights the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, often called “Nature’s Poet”. The program alternates between Rilke-inspired works and Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir. Think of the program as a spiral rather than a straight line: each return to a new Mass movement is reframed by the Rilke-inspired work that precedes it.

Paul Hindemith’s Six Chansons is elegantly set Rilke’s poems, which depict fleeting moments of truth through vivid descriptions of the natural world. Ramona Luengen’s In tiefsten Nächten sets a poem from Rilke’s early collection The Book of Hours, addressing the poet’s early reflections on faith and solitude. Stephen Andrew Taylor’s Only Yes draws on a letter in which Rilke reflects on death, while Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Die erste Elegie transforms one of Rilke’s most admired poems into a powerful work that examines human fragility and the boundary between the earthly and the infinite.

Together, Martin’s Mass and Rilke’s words explore the human experience of transcendence, and how that experience is reflected in the natural world.

Violin, viola, cello, and oboe come together in this wide-ranging concert featuring works by Boccherini, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Shostakovich, Piston, and Corigliano. Spanning Classical-era works and 20th-century repertoire, the concert highlights a variety of instrumental pairings and chamber textures.

Curated by Angélica Negrón in line with the Festival’s theme, this program focuses on the nature of sound itself. The program unfolds as an immersive experience— blurring boundaries between acoustic and electronic sound, individual and collective voice, memory and environment. The use of strings, voices, and electronics reflects Negrón’s broader work, where sound is treated as a flexible material shaped by space, texture, and listening.