Helmuth Rilling

Artistic Director and Conductor

Helmuth Rilling continues to be one of the world’s preeminent interpreters of Bach and conductors of the choral-orchestral repertoire. He has been artistic director of the Oregon Bach Festival (one of the most expansive and critically acclaimed platforms for Bach’s music in America) since its inception in 1970.

His stature in the music world was further acknowledged in 2011 when he received the Herbert von Karajan Prize, joining the company of such luminaries as Anne-Sophie Mutter, the Berlin Philharmonic, Russian pianist Evgeny Kissin, and conductor-pianist Daniel Barenboim.

Born in 1933 in Stuttgart, Germany, he studied at the State Music Academy with Hans Grischkat, Johann Nepomuk David, and Karl Gerok, and at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome with Fernando Germani. Concentrating on conducting, choral music, and the life and work of Johann Sebastian Bach, he founded the Gachinger Kantoriei in 1953 and its permanent orchestral ensemble, the Bach Collegium Stuttgart, in 1965. In 1957 he became music director at the Gedachtniskirche in Stuttgart, a position he still holds today. After studying with Leonard Bernstein in New York in 1967, Rilling became the professor of choral conducting at the State Music Academy in Frankfurt, a post he held until 1985. He also conducted the Frankfurter Kantorei there until 1981.

Teaching has always been a central focus. Rilling’s work at the Oregon Bach Festival has led to invitations to work at Indiana, Temple, Iowa, St. Olaf, Baldwin-Wallace, Westminster Choir College, Yale, and USC. In 1981 he founded the International Bachakademie Stuttgart, which was modeled largely on his achievements at the Oregon Bach Festival — an institution that further inspired similar Bach academies in Buenos Aires, Cracow, Prague, Moscow, Budapest, Tokyo, and Taipei. After several successful Bach academies in Santiago de Compostela (Spain), the Real Filharmonia of Galicia was founded there in 1996, with Rilling as its chief conductor.

He has appeared as guest conductor with most of the world’s major orchestras, including the Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Seattle and Toronto Symphonies, and prominent orchestras in Los Angeles, Vienna, Madrid, Caracas, Berlin, and Dresden. His 2010‒2011 schedule included Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in Tokyo with the NHK Orchestra, a concert tour of China, four performances of Handel’s Messiah with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, and as an exclusive event for the American Choral Director’s Association national conference, Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Chicago Symphony.

A believer in the power of music to cross political boundaries, Rilling has a special relationship with the Israeli Philharmonic, being the first German conductor to conduct in that country after World War II (and has since returned more than 100 times). He conducted the musical portions of Germany’s official reunification ceremonies. In 1994 his Stuttgart Bach academy was awarded the UNESCO Music Prize, and in 1995 he received the Theodor Heuss Prize for advancing reconciliation and international understanding.

His commitment to new music has led to many commissions, including passion settings by Tan Dun and Osvaldo Golijov; 2009’s Messiah by Sven-David Sandström; and Penderecki’s Credo, for which Rilling and the Oregon Bach Festival won a Grammy Award in 2001. Among his many volumes of recordings are the complete works of Bach, totaling 172 compact discs, issued in 2000 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death — a proud legacy of a life-long devotion to the celebration of Bach’s genius.