ÍøÆغÚÁÏ

Helmuth Rilling is an important and honored organist and conductor specializing in Baroque Era music, especially that of Johann Sebastian Bach.

His family was musical. He studied music as a child at the Protestant theological seminaries of Schönthal an der Jagst and Urach in Württemberg. He entered the Stuttgart College of Music in 1952. There he studied with Karl Gerock (organ), Johann Nepomuk David (composition), and Hans Grischkat (choral direction). After graduation in 1955 he entered the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, with Fernando Germani (1955-1957).

Rilling founded the Gächinger Kantorei (Choir) in 1954, while still a student. The Choir, of forty voices, has established an international reputation as one of the major Baroque choirs in the world.

In 1957 he became organist and choirmaster of the Gedächtniskirche in Stuttgart, a position he continues to hold. He taught at the Spandau school for sacred music from 1963 to 1966, during which time he rebuilt the school's choir. In 1966 he became a lecturer at the Frankfurt Hochschule für Musik and from 1969 to 1981 was conductor of the Frankfurt Kantorei.

He founded the Stuttgart Bach-Collegium in 1965. This is an original instruments ensemble intended to accompany the Gächinger Kantorei. He has led the two ensembles in guest appearances throughout the world.

In 1970 he founded the Oregon Bach Festival in Eugene, home of the University of Oregon. This had led to his frequent appearance at other American Universities. He still continues as its music director

In 1981 he founded the International Bach Academy Stuttgart, which he directs. He has assisted in the founding of national Bach academies along the same lines in Japan, Argentina, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia, and Hungary. In 1990 he was appointed President of the New Bach Society.

He records frequently. His most notable achievement is the recording of all 200 of Bach's church cantatas, using the Stuttgart Bach-Collegium and the Gächinger Kantorei. He has also recorded the "Brandenburg Concertos" with the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra. He has recorded over a hundred releases on various labels, including Vox, Nonesuch, Denon, CBS, and Turnabout.

He does not confine his music-making to the Baroque Era; in 1988 he led the 120-year-delayed world premiere of the "Messa per Rossini" written by Verdi and twelve other Italian composers for the first anniversary of Rossini's death. He has also recorded a Schubert Mass, the Dvorak Stabat Mater, and music of Brahms.

Sauguet, Henri Bordeaux, France 05 18 1901 Paris, France 06 22 1989

Henri Sauget became a well-known composer in France, with his local success beginning to spread elsewhere since his death. His music is highly sophisticated, but seemingly simple and direct, and with the French tendency to avoid emotionalism and appeal to reason.

He was born Jean Pierre Poupard. He was the son of Auguste-Frédéric Poupard, but used his mother's maiden name as his professional surname. He was a pupil of Joseph-Marie Canteloube. He began writing letters to the composer Darius Milhaud, resulting in his encouragement to go to Paris to study at the conservatory, which he did in 1922. He became a student of Charles Koechlin, but was also affected by the music of Eric Satie, to which Milhaud introduced him.

Sauguet, together with Roger Desormièr, Henri Cliquet-Pleyel, and Maxime Jacob, founded a group called the École d'Arceuil, named after Satie's home. Satie himself sponsored their attention-getting concert in 1923, but the group disbanded when the older composer died in 1925.

As a result of that concert, Sauguet received a commission for a one-act farcical opera, "Le Plumet du colonel" (The Colonel's Plume) and a ballet, "Les Roses." These were modest successes, but Sauguet scored a major hit in 1927 when the Diaghilev Ballets Russe staged his ballet "Le Chatte" (The Cat), choreographed by Balanchine.

With the income from "The Cat," Sauguet was able to give up the mundane jobs which had been his previous support and devote himself to music, although he did supplement his income by writing as a music critic. He remained much in demand as a composer of ballet scores and other music for the stage, and wrote a large amount of music for radio, screen, stage, and television. He was an effective songwriter, and composed four symphonies, a large amount of chamber music, including one work for the improbable combination of saxophone, harmonica, and musical saw.

He was also a devoted art collector, and appeared on occasion as an actor. ~ Joseph Stevenson

Soprano Sibylla Rubens began in the 1990s to establish a career as a concert and Lieder singer, and, to a lesser extent, opera. She studied at the State Musikhochschule in the town of Trossingen and continued at the Hochschule for Music and Fine Arts in Frankfurt am Main. Her interests after graduation are evident from her continued studies: master classes in Lieder interpretation with Irwin Cage (a great Lieder accompanist and coach), other master classes with Edith Mathis (a great Lieder singer), and continuing studies since 1992 with another noted Lieder singer, Elsa Cavelti, in Basle, Switzerland.

Rubens has sung in festivals and concerts all over Europe. She sings the great oratorios and other full-scale works of the Baroque to Romantic era, including Bach cantatas and passions, Mozart masses, Magnificat, and Requiem, Handel's Messiah and Israel in Egypt, Haydn's Creation and Seasons, Mendelssohn's Elijah and Lobgesang, Schumann's Scenes from Faust, Brahms' German Requiem and Fauré's Requiem, and Mahler's Fourth Symphony. In addition, she has performed Alfred Schnittke's Requiem and in Denisov's arrangement of Schubert's Lazarus.

She works with both "original instruments" and standard orchestras and their conductors. These include such stars of the concert stage as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Helmuth Rilling, and the Stuttgart Bach Academy, the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Philippe Herreweghe and the Chapelle Royale, Hartmut Haenchen, the NDR Symphony Orchestra of Hannover, the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leopold Hager, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra under Michael Gielen, Herbert Blomstedt and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Frans Brüggen and the Orchestre de Paris, and Christopher Hogwood and the Beethoven Akademie.

Rubens is in demand for summer music festivals, and has been praised for her singing of the Mozart roles of Marcellina (Marriage of Figaro) and Pamina (The Magic Flute) at the Stuttgart State Opera. Beginning in April 2001 she began a tour series of Lieder evenings with bass Thomas Quasthoff.

Rubens records on the Hänssler Classics label, and also has appeared on the Harmonia Mundi, Erato, and Decca labels. Her discography includes cantatas, the B minor Mass, and the Christmas Oratorio of J.S. Bach, Handel's Messiah, Mozart's Requiem and Idomeneo, Schubert's E flat major Mass and Lazarus, and, with Quasthoff, Hugo Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch.

Though she was active in the latter half of the 1990s, Camilla Nylund emerged in the early years of the 21st century as a leading soprano especially noted for appearances in the operas of Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Mozart. With a robust repertoire in opera and concert works, Nylund has performed on-stage in many of the top venues across the U.S. and Europe.

Nylund was born in Vaasa, Finland, on June 11, 1968. She studied voice with Eva Illes before studying at the Salzburger Mozarteum. Nylund was an ensemble member with the Niedersächsischen Staatsoper from 1995-1999. During this period, she appeared on her first recordings: contemporary composer Mikko Heiniö's Hermes, on the Ondine label, and the E.T.A. Hoffmann Miserere, on Koch International, both issued in 1996. Nylund next served as a member of the Saxon State Opera in Dresden, from 1999-2001. While there, she was the recipient of the prestigious Christel Goltz-Preis in 2000. She also made a number of notable debuts around this time, including with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (2001), singing Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs.

Nylund's first DVD appeared in 2002, the highly successful Dacapo production of Langgaard's Antikrist, in which she sang The Great Whore. Her expansive repertoire has allowed her to perform in a variety of roles in her career, including Mimi (La bohème), Anne Trulove (The Rake's Progress), and Desdemona (Otello). She also has an enormous range in concert works, performing works by Bach, Bernstein, Bruckner, and Mahler, and many others, including contemporary composers. She has appeared at many of the world's major operatic venues, including the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Finnish National Opera. In 2004, Nylund made her acclaimed Zurich debut as Leonore in Fidelio, under Nikolaus Harnoncourt. For her 2008 Salzburg Festival debut, she sang the title role in Rusalka, with Franz Welser-Möst conducting the Cleveland Orchestra. That same year, Nylund was given the title Kammersängerin (Chamber Singer) by the state of Saxony. Nylund has appeared in several productions at the Bayreuth Festival since 2011, including Wagner's Tannhaüser, Die Walküre, Lohengrin, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

Nylund's recordings can be found on the Deutsche Grammophon, Hänssler Classic, ArtHaus Musik labels, among others. Her more acclaimed recordings include a 2010 ArtHaus Musik DVD of Wagner's Rienzi, and a 2018 Opus Arte release of a Bayreuth Festival production of Wagner's Tannhaüser. In 2020, Nylund was heard on an Orfeo album of Richard Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten. ~ Robert Cummings & Keith Finke