Carmel Bach Festival: Mozart Requiem

This program opens with Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de confessore, K. 339, a luminous work written for the Salzburg Cathedral. These vespers showcase Mozart’s mastery of combining choral and orchestral textures— featuring moments of grandeur balanced by intimate, lyrical exchanges.

Following this is Mozart’s Requiem, K. 626, his final, unfinished masterpiece. Left incomplete at the time of his death, the Requiem is both a deeply personal reflection and a timeless communal expression of mourning and hope. In this work, soloists, choir, and orchestra engage in a poignant conversation, weaving together themes of humanity and eternity with sublime intensity.

The program concludes with Peteris Vasks’ Dona nobis pacem (Grant Us Peace), a contemporary meditation on peace and reconciliation. Vasks’ music speaks with a powerful simplicity, offering a dialogue between past and present, tradition and innovation.