Helmuth Rilling

“Music should never be merely comfortable, never fossilised, never soothing. It should startle people and reach deep down inside them, forcing them to reflect.”
Helmuth Rilling

Helmuth Rilling, born in 1933 in Stuttgart, is acclaimed worldwide as a conductor, teacher and Bach scholar. In 1954 he founded the internationally acclaimed Gächinger Kantorei chorus, which joined forces with the Bach Collegium Stuttgart as its regular orchestral partner eleven years later. It was at this time that Professor Rilling began his intensive work with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Rilling has both fervently advocated neglected choral music of the Romantic period and promoted contemporary music by regularly commissioning and performing pieces by key composers of our time.
He has toured throughout Europe, the United States, Canada, Asia and South America, both as a guest conductor and with his own ensembles. Maestro Rilling has collaborated with the world’s greatest orchestras, including the Wiener Philharmoniker, the New York Philharmonic and Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra. Over the last thirty years a special friendship has emerged with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, with which Professor Rilling has performed more than one hundred concerts.
He is co-founder and was, until 2013, Artistic Director of the Oregon Bach Festival, which since its inception in 1970 has become one of America’s most prestigious music festivals. In 1981 he established the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, which initially focused on the promotion of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music and in the course of time grew into an exceptional institution that excels not only in its ensembles (the Gächinger Kantorei and the Bach Collegium Stuttgart) but devotes considerable resources to education and outreach through master-classes, symposia and children’s programmes.
Working with young musicians from around the globe has always been a central focus of Rilling’s work. As part of a project of the Bachakademie Stuttgart, from 2001-2009 he worked with the Festival Ensemble Stuttgart, which led to the foundation of the Young Stuttgart Bach Ensemble in 2011. Through his worldwide network of Bach Academies, Rilling offers workshops for students across the globe. In recent years Maestro Rilling has travelled to Japan, the USA, Taiwan, Spain, Poland, Hungary and Italy, and he toured to China with his Gächinger Kantorei and the Bach Collegium Stuttgart for the first time.
Helmuth Rilling’s inexhaustible and creative activity is documented in hundreds of CD, radio and television productions. He was the first to record all of the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, and was the initiator of the International Bachakademie’s critically acclaimed project to record Bach’s complete works, released on one hundred and seventy-two CDs during the Bach anniversary year in 2000. That same year, Rilling won the coveted Grammy award for his recording of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Credo, and was again nominated in 2001 for his recording of Wolfgang Rihm’s Deus Passus. Recent recordings include works by Haydn, Handel and Gubaidulina (The Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ according to St John, Echo Klassik award in 2008), as well as a live recording of Britten’s War Requiem (Editor’s Choice award from Britain’s Gramophone magazine), The Messiah by Sven-David Sandström which Rilling commissioned, and Verdi’s Requiem. His recording of Honegger’s Joan of Arc was published in 2013.
Helmuth Rilling received the UNESCO International Music Prize in1994 and the Theodor Heuss Taten der Versöhnung (Deeds of Reconciliation) Prize the following year. In 2003 he became an Honorary Member of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences, and in 2008 on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday he was awarded the Staufer Gold Medal, the highest award of the state of Baden Württemberg.
In November 2011 maestro Rilling was awarded the prestigious Herbert von Karajan Music Prize in Baden-Baden (the previous year’s recipient was Daniel Barenboim). Helmuth Rilling was honoured for his unique lifetime engagement with Johann Sebastian Bach as well as his teaching activities around the world. In October 2013 Professor Rilling received the ECHO Klassik life achievement award from the German Phono-Akademie.