Helmuth Rilling, conductor

Internationally recognized as one of the pre-eminent authorities on the music of J.S. Bach and his contemporaries, German conductor Helmuth Rilling is also acclaimed for outstanding performances with the world's leading orchestras, most notably of the choral repertoire.

Mr. Rilling was born in Stuttgart in 1933 and studied at the State Music Academy there and at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. In 1954, he founded the Gächinger Kantorei, and in 1965, he established its instrumental counterpart, the Bach Collegium Stuttgart.  Mr. Rilling is also the director of the International Bach Academy in Stuttgart, which he founded in 1981. Together with the teachers and ensembles of this institution, he has held Bach Academy sessions all over the world, including such diverse cities as Buenos Aires, Krakow, Prague, Moscow, Budapest and Tokyo.

Of particular importance to Mr. Rilling is the Oregon Bach Festival in Eugene, Oregon, which was founded in 1969 and where many LA Chamber Orchestra musicians play every summer. He was Chief Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic de Galicia (Spain) until 2000. Mr. Rilling is a frequent guest conductor with leading orchestras in Europe, North America, and Japan, including the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, the New York Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony.

Mr. Rilling is the only conductor to have recorded all of Bach's sacred cantatas, a pioneering project that has been followed by many other efforts to bring musical discoveries to light. In 1998, Krzysztof Penderecki wrote a full-length Credo for Helmuth Rilling that he premiered at the Oregon Bach Festival and subsequently in Krakow and Stuttgart. His latest project was a critically acclaimed commission of four new Passions composed by Wolfgang Rihm, Sofia Gubaidulina, Osvaldo Golijov and Tan Dun which received their premieres together in Stuttgart in September 2000.

His successful collaborations with the Hänssler Classic label, including the Bach cantata recordings, culminated with the Edition Bachakademie, the first recording of the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Combining the expertise of the Bach Academy and the artistic direction of Helmuth Rilling, Hänssler Classic released this wealth of music (172 CDs) to coincide with the 250th anniversary of Bach's death in 2000.