Nature’s Poet

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.