The Carmel Bach Festival opens its 88th season Saturday evening for two full weeks overflowing with evening and daytime concerts and events. The Festival, which draws world-class musicians from around the globe, has been a cornerstone of Carmel culture for nearly a century. Festival highlights include the repeating daily main concerts and chamber music programs, Sunset Lobby Foyer concerts, vocal and instrumental masterclasses, outdoor Tower brass music, masterclass showcases, family concerts, the closing Best of the Fest concert and much more. Performances take place at Carmel’s Sunset Center, the Carmel Mission, and other locations throughout the region.

Acclaimed Norwegian artistic director and principal conductor Grete Pedersen has chosen “Dialogues” as the core theme of this summer’s Festival. She describes these dialogues as multifaceted conversations between artists, composers and audiences; between musical instruments in counterpoint; and communications between the past with the present. It’s a theme that underscores the reality that music has always been an important and enduring part of human conversation.

Musical adventures

On opening night, Pedersen leads the ensemble in Igor Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella Suite,” a modern reimagining of Baroque music that explores connections across time, cultures and creative expression. Originally presented as a ballet, the suite will be performed in tandem with visual projections of Pablo Picasso’s set design sketches for the piece. Expect a special Carmel version of this work, under Pedersen’s leadership. The evening begins with Felix Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture,” a delightful and dynamic conversation between literature and music, as the fairy folk, lovers and rustics encounter one another in this musical take on Shakespeare’s play. The program concludes with “Harmoniemesse,” Haydn’s final Mass, a contemplative choral masterpiece that represents the dialogue between devotion and transcendence.

“Everything is a conversation, right?” says Pedersen. “We get new knowledge all the time. Here we focus on dialogues between composers like the Stravinsky suite, which is built on different early music pieces. Or the knowledge that Schumann was the one who thought Mozart should be known again, because he was on the way out. So we put the Schumann Cello Concerto together with the Mozart Jupiter Symphony on Friday night, along with ‘Starburst,’ a new work by celebrated living composer Jessie Montgomery.”

As she points out, the whole B Minor Mass by Bach, the Sunday afternoon masterwork, is a marvel not only of the composer’s towering skill but also of his encyclopedic embrace of musical styles. The Mass is Bach’s conversation between Renaissance polyphony, French grandeur, the elegance of the Italian Baroque, German choral style, dance influences and operatic recitative. An extraordinary dialogue indeed! “And the ‘Et incarnatus est’ in this Mass is the best Christmas music ever written,” Pedersen adds.

Nathan Lutz, Carmel Bach’s executive director, now in his second year at the Festival, says, “Bach’s signature offering, ‘The Art of the Fugue,’ is very much a musical dialogue, with its different voices and the counterpoint with the different voices working together. Grete had this brilliant idea of putting movements of ‘The Art of the Fugue’ in every chamber concert this season. All with different instrumentations and settings.”

Pedersen says that this Bach masterpiece is an excellent example of the importance of musicians’ playing and listening to one another simultaneously. Even the legendary unfinished final fugue seems to leave the conversation open-ended, as if the music invited future generations to respond, to keep conversing with the theme. Pedersen comments that ‘The Art of the Fugue’ also has a larger philosophical message for society, which is that everyone must be present and offering their best while at the same time listening to others.

For this grand dialogue of fugal ideas, Lutz and Pedersen laughed that they have been talking about handing out coffeehouse-style cards for ticketholders to punch off the 18 fugues and canons as they hear them throughout the Festival’s chamber series.

“Another fun thing we are doing with the dialogues theme,” says Lutz, “is that for all the main concerts there is a question for the audience. For example, on the Tuesday night program, the question is: `Mozart’s Requiem was not completed before his death. What’s something you’re afraid to leave unfinished?’” Pedersen’s Friday concert asks the question, “What music or art connects you to something bigger than yourself?” Lutz says it was her idea to bring in voices of the audience as part of the dialogues during this summer. Their written responses to the questions will be collected.

In addition to Pedersen’s three main concerts, ticketholders can enjoy Monday night’s Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven program led by British concertmaster and conductor Peter Hanson showcasing Andrew Arthur in Haydn’s Harpsichord Concerto in D Major. Tuesday nights, the Festival’s distinguished artistic advisor and director of choral activities Andrew Megill leads the full ensemble in Mozart’s magnificent “Requiem,” a program that includes a contemporary work by Peter Vasks for a dialogue between past and present, tradition and innovation.

Wednesday night, Megill conducts “Reflections” at the Carmel Mission featuring choral works by Bach, Byrd, Allegri, and contemporary pieces inspired by them. Thursday night’s crossover program with violinist Edwin Huizinga and guitarist William Coulter surveys Scandinavian choral and folk traditions, and features Olov Johannson playing the traditional Swedish nyckelharpa.

Grammy-nominated tenor Brian Giebler and mezzo-soprano Guadalupe Paz join returning vocal soloists soprano Clara Rottsolk and bass-baritone Dashon Burton.

Theatrical performances in Studio 105

New this year, the Festival presents two afternoon performances in Sunset’s Studio 105 blending music and theater. “The Crown of Creativity,” on July 19, co-sponsored by New Canon Theater, explores the legacy of the legendary Queen Christina of Sweden. On July 26, Studio 105 features Igor Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale,” narrated by actress Francesca Faridany. David Gordon, historian and emeritus staff member of the Festival, calls this a landmark event for Carmel.

“It is important to remember,” he says, “that the founders of the Carmel Bach Festival were devoted to the avant-garde and promoted the most radical and contemporary artistic and musical ideas. On Sept. 3, 1931, in the Denny Watrous Gallery on Dolores Street, members of the San Francisco Symphony performed the West Coast premiere of Stravinsky’s ‘L’histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale)’. The concert was produced by Dene Denny and led by the distinguished conductor and musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, who also presented a lecture at the beginning of the concert. As with all Dene Denny’s productions of contemporary music, the Stravinsky work was performed twice in the concert, to give the audience a chance to take in the new music.”

A new book in Norwegian

At the conclusion of our conversation about the Festival’s musical adventures, Pedersen handed me a book written in Norwegian about the famed Norwegian Soloists Choir, which she has conducted for the past 35 years. “Maybe you know someone who can translate this into English,” she said with a twinkle. I do have such an acquaintance, Mette Julian of Santa Barbara, who just sent me some quotes for this column from Voice Art: “The Norwegian Soloists Choir Through 75 Years,” by Bodil Maroni Jensen and Einar Solbu. Here’s a taste from this just-published book:

Pedersen says, “I talk to the composers. Haydn is easy to talk to. Monteverdi also is not difficult. Berio (a modern experimental composer) is quite exciting to converse with. But Bach is busy. He has so much to do. So I ask him to take it more slowly. I say to him, `Explain this to me, will you not?’ It’s easy to think of Bach as a genius, to put him on a pedestal. But he was human. Thinking about his life, I imagine he must have been quite stressed.

“One of the reasons for taking on the responsibility of the Bach Festival performances is that it gives me the opportunity to work with instrumental music. It’s a beautiful environment, a delightful festival, and a splendid orchestra.

“I believe classical music should be shaken up. At least, we should not be afraid to try this. And if we do, it’s not a crime.”

The musicmaking begins this Saturday!

For tickets and more information along with a full listing of the times and locations of concerts and events see www.bachfestival.org or call (831) 624-1521.