FESTIVAL REVIEW: Rilling From Here to Eternity At The Oregon Bach Festival By Janos Gereben (Oregon Bach Festival, July 10, 1999)

FESTIVAL REVIEW
Rilling From Here to Eternity At The Oregon Bach Festival
July 10, 1999

By Janos Gereben

Soft-spoken, self-effacing, shy-to-a-fault Helmuth Rilling is a walking, amazing contradiction. One moment, the man who has been conducting the Oregon Bach Festival since he founded it 30 years ago blends into the landscape so that you can't spot him at all. The next, he presides effortlessly over 200 musicians at a Mahler Second Symphony rehearsal as they play through enormously difficult dynamic changes.

At 66 now, he is constantly on the move, with the Stuttgart-Oregon-Caracas circuit just one of his appointed rounds. While in the middle of a 160-CD recording project of all of Bach's 1,126 catalogued works (including hundreds to be recorded for the first time), Rilling is... commissioning new works, four major works telling the story of Christ:

St. Matthew Passion -- Tan Dun
St. Mark Passion-- Osvaldo Golijov
St. Luke Passion-- Wolfgang Rihm
St. John Passion-- Sofia Gubaidulina

This new project is not just a work here and something new there: it's a comprehensive, bold venture. Rilling will celebrate "Passion 2000" for the European Music Festival of August 27 - September 10, next year, with his Bach Collegium Stuttgart performing these four commissioned works, framed by Bach's St. Mark and St. John Passions.

It is also now known that in June and July before that, at next year's Oregon Bach Festival in Eugene, Rilling will present the St. John and St. Matthew Passions (along with the B Minor Mass), and there's an intriguing possibility of a "way out of town" preview or at least rehearsal in Eugene for the Stuttgart celebration.

Right now however, on the eve of this year's Oregon Bach finale, Rilling is concentrating on Mahler's Resurrection Symphony so much that he is even conducting choral rehearsals himself.

Featured as the soloists in the that performance are two who show enormous promise-- one of them is certain to be a much sought-after star soprano within a couple of years--but have yet to sing opera in the U.S. Camilla Nylund, 31, and Susan Platts, 26, both have terrific voices. While Platts, an alto from Canada doesn't know if she will get into opera soon... or at all, she feels comfortable with oratorio work, and made a wonderful U.S. debut at last year's festival in the Bach B Minor Mass.

Nylund is another story. Even without a single opera performance in this country, the singer is well on her way to stardom after just a four-year career.

Tall, blonde, statuesque, Finnish and a junior version of Karita Mattila, Nylund was born in Vaasa, and was trained in Austria and Germany. Four years ago, as she was getting her degree from the Salzburg Mozarteum, she got a contract with the Hannover Staatsoper, started with Micaela, and sang dozens of roles since ranging from the Fledermaus Rosalinda to the Meistersinger Eva. Just as her voice has a range from lyric to spinto soprano (although there is a strange lack of Verdi roles in her repertory), Nylund's interest is widespread and is well: along with an Onegin Tatiana. This Mahler Resurrection Symphony is Nylund's West Coast debut.

(Janos Gereben is arts editor of the Oakland (CA) Post Newspaper Group.)