Helmuth Rilling conducts Mendelssohn, Bach motets, and the St. Matthew Passion. Photo: Michael Latz

Gold Tickets, season passes to all Eugene concerts for the 2012 Oregon Bach Festival, are now on sale online or by mail.

Gold Ticket holders receive first preference for the 2012 Festival’s best seating. Other benefits include admission to all ticketed Eugene events with the same seats for each concert, free parking passes in the Hult Center garage, and the option to transfer tickets to friends. This year’s Gold Ticket holders have an additional option: first opportunity to purchase a VIP table for four at the Cuthbert Amphitheatre for Pink Martini, July 1.

Regular tickets will be on sale March 21, with priority given to contributing Friends of the Festival.

Gold Ticket price options are:

• $681 including a standard reserved seat for Pink Martini
• $627 without Pink Martini
• $520 for the VIP table for four

To order, visit the online order form through the Hult Center/City of Eugene, or download a print order form and return in person or by mail to the Hult Center Bach’s Office.

Concerts included in the Gold Ticket

(Download printable list-pdf)

Friday June 29
7:30 pm Mendelssohn and Joshua Bell—Eugene (Silva)

Sunday July 1
8 pm Pink Martini (Cuthbert Amphitheatre)
Note: This concert is optional. The Gold Ticket may be purchased without this outdoor event, with a reserved seat, or with a VIP table for four.

Monday July 2
7:30 pm Portland Baroque: Goldbergs on Strings (Beall)

Tuesday July 3
4:30 pm Discovery Series: St. Matthew Passion 1 (Soreng)
7:30 pm Nadina Mackie Jackson and Guy Few (Beall)

Thursday July 5
4:30 pm Discovery Series: St. Matthew Passion 2 (Soreng)
7:30 pm Chamber music TBA (Beall)

Friday July 6
7:30 pm John Scott: Bach organ recital (Central Lutheran)

Saturday July 7
10 am OBF Kids: Buzz & Crow (The Studio)
7:30 pm A Child of Our Time—Eugene (Silva)

Sunday July 8
7:30 pm SFYCA (Silva)

Monday July 9
7:30 pm Matthew Halls: Bach keyboard concerti (Beall)

Tuesday July 10
4:30 pm Discovery Series: St. Matthew Passion 3 (Soreng)
7:30 pm A Debussy Soiree (Beall)

Wednesday July 11
7:30 pm Helmuth Rilling: Bach Motets and concerti (Beall)

Thursday July 12
4:30 pm Discovery Series: St. Matthew Passion 4 (Soreng)
7:30 pm The 5 Browns (Silva)

Friday July 13
7:30 pm Tango Harmonica—Eugene (Beall)

Saturday July 14
10 am OBF Kids: Peter and the Wolf (Soreng)
7:30 pm Angela Hewitt: The Goldberg Variations (Beall)

Sunday July 15
3 pm Bach St. Matthew Passion (Silva)

Fans can vote in the awards, which present 21 nominations over seven categories, selected by a jury of BBC Music Magazine critics from almost 300 five-star recordings reviewed during 2011.

The disc of 12 Purcell Sonatas displays the composer’s innate ability at blending influences from French, Italian and English music; exotic dissonances can be heard alongside the unique use of counterpoint to create these exceptional works. It features Retrospect’s four Baroque instrumentalist super stars—Sophie Gent (violin), Matthew Truscott (violin), Jonathan Manson (bass viol) and Halls (harpsichord/organ).

The magazine praised it as a CD of the month, observing that the musicians “speak the language of Purcell as if it was their mother tongue.” Preview tracks or a download of the CD are available from the Linn Records website.

To vote in the magazine contest, visit the awards website, complete a simple online form, listen to extracts from each recording or DVD, and then vote for your choices. Voters are eligible to win prizes, including a Kemble centennial piano and copies of all the nominated CDs and DVDs. Online voting takes place now through February 29. Winners will be selected at random.

OBF audiences can enjoy the work of Matthew Halls at the harpsichord July 9 during a Bach recital at the 2012 OBF.

Bell’s OBF debut was announced at the January 22 annual meeting of the Friends of the Festival.

The Festival also announced a return of Juilliard-trained, piano-playing siblings The 5 Browns, headlining a July 12 musical tribute to Hollywood in Eugene’s Silva Concert Hall.

Bell and the Browns join a lineup that already includes harpsichordist/conductor Matthew Halls, keyboardist Angela Hewitt, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, organist John Scott, and pop orchestra Pink Martini.

Based at the University of Oregon in Eugene with a four-concert series in Portland, the OBF expands to five other Oregon cities and thirty ticketed concerts in 2012—the broadest reach in its history.

A recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize and the newly named Music Director of The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Bell will perform Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, the composer’s most celebrated contribution to orchestral music. Bell takes Mendelssohn one daring step further by performing his own cadenza—the work’s climactic extended solo.

The Italian Symphony and the rousing choral spectacle Die Erste Walpurgisnacht complete the program.

Helmuth Rilling conducts Mendelssohn, Bach motets, and the St. Matthew Passion. Photo: Michael Latz

Mendelssohn has long been credited with jump-starting a 19th century Bach revival. The work that sparked that revival, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, is firmly at the heart of this year’s Festival.

Rilling will conduct the Passion as the grand finale in Eugene, and also lead four lecture-concerts that fully explore the monumental work. The St. Matthew lecture concerts will be filmed in high definition as a 2013 installment on the OBF’s innovative DigitalBach.com website, produced in association with the Hinkle Charitable Foundation.

Rilling will also lead a Beall Hall concert of Bach motets and concerti, featuring harpsichordist Boris Kleiner.

More than two hundred years after the St. Matthew Passion, British composer Michael Tippett translated its structure and emotional impact into the modern classic A Child of Our Time. Compelled by events preceding the Nazi Kristallnacht attacks, Tippett focused his work on the story of a young man’s attempt to seek justice. Tippett integrated American spirituals in place of the Passion’s chorales, furthering the work’s symbolic, universal, and deeply humanistic effect.

Matthew Halls conducts A Child of our Time and performs a Bach harpsichord recital. Photo: Eric Richmond

British conductor Matthew Halls, who succeeds Rilling as the Festival’s artistic director after the 2013 season, will conduct A Child of our Time, opening the concert with Bach’s celebratory Lutheran Mass in G Major.

An acclaimed keyboardist as a soloist and with his own London-based Retrospect Ensemble, Halls will also Bach keyboard concerti on harpsichord in a Beall Hall concert.

Bach’s Goldberg Variations weave through the fabric of the Festival in concerts and events that mark the major birth and death anniversaries of Glenn Gould, the enigmatic genius closely associated with the work.

• Portland Baroque Orchestra tours a string orchestra arrangement of the variations to Astoria, Lincoln City, Corvallis, and Eugene.
• The acclaimed pianist Hewitt performs the set on piano July 14 in Beall Hall.
• OBF Cinema will present two prize-winning films about Gould in Eugene’s Bijou Art Cinema.
• The Variations will be the topic of the Hinkle Distinguished Seminar.
• Halls’s recording on harpsichord of the Variations will be the audio track for the second major interactive component added to the Digital Bach website.

Beyond the major threads, the 2012 OBF schedule includes

• 

  Thomas Lauderdale and Storm Large of Pink Martini.

  The return of Pink Martini Sunday, July 1, following the conclusion of Eugene’s Olympic Track and Field Trials, the Festival’s first production in the outdoor Cuthbert Amphitheatre. Rock chanteuse Storm Large guest stars with the popular Portland-based orchestra.

• Recitals of Bach’s Clavier-Übung III (Organ Mass) in Eugene and Portland by John Scott, music director at Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York, and previously music director at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
• A salon-style chamber music concert of music by Debussy, celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth.
• The 15^th anniversary concert of the Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy, conducted by Anton Armstrong and featuring alumni singers and new works.
• A night of tango in Portland, Bend, Ashland, and Eugene led by harmonica virtuoso Joe Powers.

The OBF Gold Ticket, a season pass to Eugene concerts, goes on sale February 13, while tickets for the full schedule go on sale Bach’s birthday, March 21.

OBF major concert schedule June 29-July 15  as of January 22, 2012

Helmuth Rilling, artistic director and conductor.
All information subject to change.

PDF/Printable version

Friday June 29

7:30 pm  Joshua Bell plays Mendelssohn—Eugene Joshua Bell, violin; OBF vocal soloists; Berwick Chorus of the OBF; OBF Orchestra; Helmuth Rilling, conductor. Mendelssohn: Italian Symphony; Violin Concerto in E Minor; Die Erste Walpurgisnacht (Silva Concert Hall)

Saturday June 30

7:30 pm  Joshua Bell plays Mendelssohn-Portland (Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall)

7:30 pm  The Goldbergs on Strings—Astoria Portland Baroque Orchestra; Monica Huggett, director. Bach: Goldberg Variations, arranged for string orchestra by Dmitri Sitkovetsky (Liberty Theater)

Sunday July 1

3:00 pm  The Goldbergs on Strings—Corvallis (LaSells Stewart Center)

7:30 pm  Pink Martini with Storm Large (Cuthbert Amphitheatre, Eugene)

Monday July 2

7:30 pm  The Goldbergs on Strings—Eugene (Beall Concert Hall)

Tuesday July 3

4:30 pm  Discovery Series: Bach St. Matthew Passion Part 1 (Soreng Theater)

7:30 pm  The Goldbergs on Strings—Lincoln City (Lincoln City Cultural Center)

7:30 pm  Guy and Nadina Guy Few, trumpet; Nadina Mackie Jackson, bassoon (Beall Concert Hall)

Thursday July 5

12 pm  OBF Cinema: Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (Bijou Art Cinema)

4:30 pm   Discovery Series: Bach St. Matthew Passion Part 2 (Soreng Theater)

Friday July 6

12 pm OBF Cinema: Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (Bijou Art Cinema)

7:30 pm   John Scott: Bach organ recital—Eugene Bach: Clavier-Übung III (Central Lutheran Church)

7:30 pm  A Child of Our Time—Portland OBF vocal soloists; Berwick Chorus of the OBF; OBF Orchestra; Matthew Halls, conductor. Bach: Lutheran Mass in G Major; Michael Tippett: A Child of Our Time (Trinity Episcopal Cathedral)

Saturday July 7

10 am    OBF Kids: Nadina Mackie Jackson and Guy Few (The Studio)

12 pm   OBF Cinema: Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (Bijou Art Cinema)

7:30 pm A Child of Our Time—Eugene (Silva Concert Hall)

Sunday July 8

12 pm OBF Cinema: Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (Bijou Art Cinema)

7:30 pm   Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy OBF vocal soloists; SFYCA; OBF Orchestra; Anton Armstrong, Helmuth Rilling, conductors. (Silva Concert Hall)

Monday July 9

7:30 pm   Matthew Halls: Bach keyboard concerti Matthew Halls, harpsichord; OBF chamber players. Bach: Concerto in D major for harpsichord; Sarabanda con Partite; Concerto in F Major for harpsichord and recorders (Beall Concert Hall)

7:30 pm John Scott: Bach organ recital—Portland (Trinity Episcopal Cathedral)

Tuesday July 10

4:30 pm    Discovery Series: Bach St. Matthew Passion Part 3 (Soreng Theater)

7:30 pm A Debussy Soiree (Beall Concert Hall)

Wednesday July 11

7:30 pm Helmuth Rilling: Bach Motets and concerti Gabriel Adorjan, violin; Allan Vogel, oboe; Boris Kleiner, harpsichord; Berwick Chorus of the OBF; OBF Orchestra; Helmuth Rilling, conductor. Bach: Motets Der geist hilft, Jesu meine freude, and Singet dem herrn; “Double” Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C Minor; Harpsichord Concerto No. 1 in D Minor (Beall Concert Hall)

7:30 pm    Tango Harmonica—Portland Joe Powers and friends (Lincoln Performance Hall)

Thursday July 12

4:30 pm    Discovery Series: Bach St. Matthew Passion Part 4 (Soreng Theater)

7:30 pm    Tango Harmonica—Bend (Tower Theater)

7:30 pm    The 5 Browns (Silva Concert Hall)

Friday July 13

7:30 pm    Tango Harmonica—Eugene (Beall Concert Hall)

Saturday July 14

10 am      OBF Kids: Peter and the Wolf Dance Theater Oregon (Soreng Theater)

12 pm Hinkle Distinguished Seminar: The Goldberg Variations (The Studio)

7:30 pm   Tango Harmonica—Ashland (SOU Recital Hall)

7:30 pm   Angela Hewitt in recital: The Goldberg Variations (Beall Concert Hall)

Sunday July 15

3 pm     Bach St. Matthew Passion OBF vocal soloists; Berwick Chorus of the OBF; OBF Orchestra; Helmuth Rilling, conductor. (Silva Concert Hall)

The slate of officers elected at the meeting were Dave Frosaker, Senior Regional Trust Manager for Wells Fargo Bank, board chair; Don Harris, Vice Provost and Chief Information Officer for the University of Oregon, vice chair; Mary Miller, retired banker and community volunteer, secretary, who was also elected to a second board term. Jim Giustina has joined the executive committee as a board member at-large.

New members whose terms were approved included Linda Alpiger, Vice President and Senior Treasury Management Advisor, KeyBank; Don Harris; Elfrieda Heinrichs, arts patron and volunteer from Toronto, Canada; Peter von Hippel, Professor Emeritus UO departments of Chemistry and Molecular Biology; and Marla Muns, voice teacher and arts patron from Dallas, Texas.

Dave Frosaker acknowledges departing board member Brad Stangeland

During the proceedings Frosaker acknowledged Margo Norton and Brad Stangeland, board members whose service had ended. Frosaker read a tribute from conductor Anton Armstrong to Stangeland, whose family is the major underwriter of the Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy.

“Your tremendous work on behalf of the OBF is clear,” Armstrong wrote, “in the legacy of support you have provided in providing future generations the opportunity to experience great classical music.”

Following the business meeting, George Evano of the OBF staff gave a presentation on major artists and concerts of the 2012 Festival, including the opening night OBF debut of violinist Joshua Bell. The schedule is posted on the OBF website.

Soprano Karine Polverelli joins the group for Britten’s Les Illuminations, a setting of poems by Arthur Rimbaud.

Perpetuating the legacy of Mozart, the ensemble is a regular performer in its home city as well as a powerful force in frequent world tours. The 16-piece orchestra was founded in 1991 by the Brazilian-born Skou-Larsen and a handful of colleagues with the aim performing orchestral chamber music with the freedom of soloists. Their inspiration was Sandor Végh, the Hungarian violinist and conductor who was a colleague of many of the members.

Polverelli studied at the Boston Conservatory and the Manhattan School of Music. Based in Europe, she has performed in Brussels with guitarist Denis Sung-Hô at the Flagey Festival and with pianist David Miller at the Midis-Minimes Festival.

Friends of the Festival board chair Dave Frosaker, and George Evano, OBF communciations director, will address the meeting. Friends will vote on the slate of new officers.

Evano will give a guided tour of the OBF 2012 concert schedule, revealing a major guest artist.

OBF 2012 tickets go on sale February 13 (Gold Tickets only) and March 21 (Friends of the Festival priority order period).

Friends may purchase tickets for the Cypress Quartet concert at a special rate. For more information, contact the Festival offices.

Thomas Quasthoff sings jazz at the OBF's 40th anniversary gala in 2010, backed by Dave Williamson. Photo: Jon Meyers

The news traveled swiftly today—from a story in the New York Times, to a blog by Norman Lebrecht, a call from David Stabler, then via email and Facebook—that Thomas Quasthoff  has decided to say farewell to the concert stage, ending his performance career.

All of us at the OBF, and certainly audiences in Eugene, have fond memories of a singer who made his American debut here in 1995 as an unknown, amazing us as a soloist in the St. John Passion, Mozart Requiem, Dvorak Stabat Mater, and the Britten War Requiem—all in a two-week period.

He returned five more years, in such memorable nights as Beall Hall recitals of Schubert and Schumann, Penderecki’s Credo in 1998, his jazzy night of Sinatra songs with Jeff Kahane and Rick Todd in 2000, and our gala 40th anniversary year in 2010, jamming with Bobby McFerrin, singing Die Schone Mullerin in Silva Hall, and performing a fiery interpretation of Elijah to conclude that year’s OBF.

“Of course it’s a sad moment to accept that Thomas will never again perform in the Festival,” John Evans, our executive director said today. “However, it’s also a time to consider ourselves blessed to have heard such a wonderful artist, so many times over the years, and to have him as a member of our festival family. We wish him the very best.”

In the press release, Thomas says, “After almost 40 years, I have decided to retire from concert life. My health no longer allows me to live up to the high standard that I have always set for my art and myself. I owe a lot to this wonderful profession and leave without a trace of bitterness. On the contrary, I am looking forward to the new challenges that will now enter my life. I would like to thank all my fellow musicians and colleagues, with whom I stood together on stage, all the organizers, and my audience for their loyalty.”

Known for their elegant performances, the Cypress String Quartet has been described as possessing “artistry of uncommon insight and cohesion” by Gramophone, and their sound has been described as “beautifully proportioned and powerful” by The Washington Post. The concert program includes Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 76, No. 4, “Sunrise”; Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 95; and Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34.

One of the country’s most popular ensembles, the San Francisco-based Cypress has recently made appearances on concert series and in venues including Cal Performances, Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Stanford Lively Arts, Krannert Center and the Ravinia Festival. Their collaborators include artists such as Leon Fleisher, Awadagin Pratt, Gary Hoffman, Atar Arad, James Dunham, and Zuill Bailey.

The members of the Cypress Quartet play exceptional instruments including violins by Antonio Stradivarius (1681) and Carlos Bergonzi (1733), a viola by Vittorio Bellarosa (1947), and a cello by Hieronymus Amati II (1701). The Cypress Quartet takes its name from the set of twelve love songs for string quartet, The Cypresses, by Antonin Dvorák.

Since his dramatic 1997 Van Cliburn Gold Medal triumph, pianist Jon Nakamatsu has become a favorite of audiences for his brilliant but unassuming musicianship and eclectic repertoire. He has performed widely in North America, Europe, and the Far East and has collaborated with such conductors as James Conlon, Philippe Entremont, Marek Janowski, Raymond Leppard, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Michael Tilson Thomas and Osmo Vänskä. His extensive recital tours throughout the United States and Europe have featured appearances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York City, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and in cities such as Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Paris, London, and Milan.

A statue of George Frideric Handel, posing with his Messiah transcript, at London's Westminster Abbey. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

It’s a tradition almost as familiar as stockings hung by the chimney or presents under the tree: Yuletide performances of Handel’s Messiah.

For its coverage of the National Symphony’s 58th annual Christmas performance the masterwork, NPR’s Morning Edition interviewed OBF artistic director designate Matthew Halls, who conducted this year’s Washington, D.C. performances. Soprano Keira Duffy was also interviewed. The segment aired Christmas morning, December 25.

Although it was his National Symphony debut, Halls estimates that he has performed Messiah several hundred times in various capacities. As he told NPR’s Geoffrey Bennett, Halls sees more than the religious nature of the work as cause for its great appeal.

“We’re a dance culture today, and a lot of our popular music is based on dance,” Halls says. “And that has resonance with the baroque because a lot of the music for the baroque was dance-inspired. So there’s this infectious, underlying rhythm behind most of the music in the Messiah, and I think that people really like that. They like the inevitability of the dance pulse and the way in which the composer manipulates the melody around that, and I think it’s that sort of underlying rhythmic motor, which Baroque music has, that gives it its fizz.”