Bach Festival's final prelim concert booms, bodes well for 2016 edition.

The first actual concert of the pre-event lead-up to Saturday night’s opening of the 2016 Carmel Bach Festival is now officially in the books as a sold-out crowd was treated to a gorgeous happy hour show in the intimate confines of the Monterey Museum of Art on Pacific Street.

Festival mainstay Edwin Huizinga organized last night's performance, choosing a varied, 90-minute program which showed a clear penchant towards the whimsy and playfulness of the gypsy dance tunes of Hungary, France and Spain.

Joining him for this afternoon outing were cellist Ezra Seltzer, soprano Molly Quinn, and Daniel Swenberg on guitar and lute each of whom are Festival artists and all of whom had played together but not with the violinist.

There had been talk for awhile of playing a concert together with Edwin, and on this day that dream was realized in spades.

Quinn’s clear-as-a-bell soprano was punctuated with highly emotive facial expressions and expressive body language, particularly during the lyrics concerning unrequited love and relationships gone sour, during which the anger and pain of those types of unfortunate human situations was made highly palpable.

The concert’s highlight was a truly inspired reading of the third and fourth movement of Maurice Ravel’s ominous "Sonata for Violin and Cello," during which Huizinga and Seltzer displayed both deft technique and terrific chemistry, particularly in the slow, plodding third movement.

With it they held forth with long passages of atonal dissonances perfectly executed to increase the tension to nearly unbearable levels, before resolving into a smooth, dirge-like finale.

Throughout, Swenberg provided leadership and solid harmonic foundations on both the guitar and the lute for the expansive escapades of the other artists.

And Huizinga, often standing on one leg, would look to the heavens, only to suddenly play with eyes shut, offering serenely gorgeous passages, particularly in pin-drop soft passages.

This spirited, empathetic session was warmly received by the packed house, and it bodes well for what may lie ahead at this year’s festival.