Photo credits: Festival d’Orgue de Monaco
The Principality of Monaco will host the 20th edition of the Festival International d’Orgue de Monaco from October 4 to 18, 2025, offering audiences a rich and diverse musical experience across three historic venues: the Cathedral of Monaco, the Église du Sacré-Cœur, and the Église Saint-Charles. Four concerts will present varied programs designed to highlight the Principality’s exceptional instrumental heritage.
The opening concert at the Cathedral is set within the broader context of the celebrations marking the Three Jubilee Years of Saint Thomas Aquinas: the 800th anniversary of his birth in 1225, the 750th of his death in 1274, and the 700th of his canonization in 1323. For this occasion, the saint’s relics will be received in Monaco. The program will feature works by Johann Sebastian Bach, establishing a symbolic dialogue between two towering theological minds: one a composer, the other a philosopher.
The festival will then welcome Cameron Carpenter, an internationally acclaimed organist known for his boundary-breaking approach to the instrument. At once interpreter, composer, and transcriber, Carpenter has redefined contemporary perceptions of the organ. Each of his performances is a distinctive and unforgettable event, and his presence is certain to be one of the highlights of this anniversary edition.
At the Église du Sacré-Cœur, the festival will present a return appearance by Gunnar Idenstam and Lisa Rydberg, whose program for organ and violin explores the intersection of sacred music and folk tradition. Their performance will revisit Bach through the lens of popular music, imagining how German organists of the Baroque era might have shared their repertoire with rural Swedish violinists - a musical encounter reconstructed with creativity and historical sensitivity.
The closing concert will feature the Trio Pêr-Vari Kervarec, an ensemble deeply committed to preserving and transmitting cultural memory. More than a musical group, they serve as a living bridge between the past and present, between the ancient stones of churches and cathedrals and the audiences who gather there. Their program will evoke the historic Grimaldi sites in Brittany, continuing a legacy that includes their notable performance outside the Église Sainte-Dévote during the 2011 royal wedding.
With this milestone 20th edition, the Festival International d’Orgue de Monaco reaffirms its mission: to celebrate the organ as both a spiritual instrument and a cultural beacon, resonating through centuries and carried forward by artists of exceptional vision.