The German choral director Helmuth Rilling has died. Rilling is probably best-known for his advocacy of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. In a career that spanned some 70 years, he established the Gächinger Kantorei, the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, and other Bach academies around the world.
He was the first person to prepare and record on modern instruments Bach’s complete choral works. His impressive roster of vocal soloists includes Arlene Auger, Juliane Banse, Matthias Goerne, Anne Sofie von Otter, Christophe Prégardien, Thomas Quasthoff, and Christine Schäfer. The instrumental soloists include Robert Levin, Trevor Pinnock, and Dmitry Sitkovetsky, among many others. The achievement, completed in the year 2000, encompasses over 1,000 pieces of music, documented on 170 compact discs.
In 1970, Rilling cofounded the Oregon Bach Festival in Eugene, presented in conjunction with the University of Oregon (home of KWAX). Rilling served as artistic director there until 2013.
His recordings, many of them issued on the Hänssler Classic label, range far beyond Bach and his contemporaries. I’ve got a few of them in my collection, including his recording of Liszt’s oratorio “Christus” (among three of the work that I own).
His recording of Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Credo,” commissioned and performed by the Oregon Bach Festival, won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance.
Rilling died yesterday at the age of 92.
R.I.P.
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Bach, Mass in B minor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gw318qPDhk
Premiere of Penderecki’s “Credo,” live from Eugene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWOzt7zMDCo