The last big South America took place more than a decade ago. Thanks to the diverse contact between Helmuth Rilling, the Bach Academy, and numerous Latin AMerican partners, another concert trip is planned.

Hansjörg Albrecht, who conjured his cantata debut at the Bach Academy in fall 2010 with musical transparency, follows up the celebratory Overture in C Major during the third concert with three joyful cantatas: 'Der Himmel lacht! Die Erde jubilieret' as one of the earliest recordings of Bach's cantatas, which continues the piece's spiritual work with a new and modern text; 'Gott fähret auf mit Jauchzen' from 1726 and 'Erschallet, ihr Lieder', a piece that was performed numerous times by Bach himself and which was written by him while in office as Weimar's Concert Master, fetaures a text the has been attributed to the city's court poet, Salomon Franck.

Das Mitgliederkonzert unseres Förderkreises im Anschluss an die jährliche Mitgliederversammlung bietet - wie zuletzt 2009 - eine Präsentation aus der Nachwuchsarbeit: Neben dem Jungen Chor der Bachakademie sind Ausschnitte aus SingBACH, dem Mitsingprojekt für Grundschüler, zu erleben.

2012 is the 'Year of the Mass in B Minor'; no wonder, since Bach's 'Opus Summum' is also the most impressive musical domain of Helmuth Rilling and the Gächinger Kantorei and the Stuttgart Bach Collegium ensembles! A guest performance in Strasbourg...

2012 is the 'Year of the Mass in B Minor'; no wonder, since Bach's 'Opus Summum' is also the most impressive musical domain of Helmuth Rilling and the Gächinger Kantorei and the Stuttgart Bach Collegium ensembles! A guest performance in Bad Saulgau.

2012 is the 'Year of the Mass in B Minor'; no wonder, since Bach's 'Opus Summum' is also the most impressive musical domain of Helmuth Rilling and the Gächinger Kantorei and the Stuttgart Bach Collegium ensembles! Guest performances in Neumarkt and in Ottobeuren's largest basilica.

2012 is the 'Year of the Mass in B Minor'; no wonder, since Bach's 'Opus Summum' is also the most impressive musical domain of Helmuth Rilling and the Gächinger Kantorei and the Stuttgart Bach Collegium ensembles! Guest performances in France (Abbaye de Lessay, Cathédrale de Saint-Malo).

2012 is the 'Year of the Mass in B Minor'; no wonder, since Bach's 'Opus Summum' is also the most impressive musical domain of Helmuth Rilling and the Gächinger Kantorei and the Stuttgart Bach Collegium ensembles! Guest performance in Schmalkalden and in Dresden's Frauenkirche.

This salon could be entitled »A plea for a villain«. Together with narrator Christian Büsen, we follow the trail of the three-thousand-year-old detective story from the Books of Samuel, examine the controversional portrayals of the protagonists Saul and David in painting and literature, tarry awhile with the Witch of Endor and devote ourselves (naturally with due respect) to the magnificent oratorio by Handel and Jennens.

Firing people with enthusiasm for music has been a key aim for Helmuth Rilling and the Bachakademie from the very beginning. Their main focus was, and continues to be, the interpretation, analysis and explanation of choral-symphonic works. With special concert formats and a committed educational approach, we have expanded our ways of communicating the message of music, particularly to young people, and we also endeavour to reach those who might otherwise only rarely encounter classical music.

Handel’s oratorio Saul was premiered in 1739 and was the first of the composer’s late oratorios. It owes its composition to Handel’s professional difficulties, when, after some less successful opera seasons, he sought a new business model. The work captivates through its similarity to opera and the colour of its orchestration: in addition to the usual scoring, Handel used recorders, harp, solo organ and carillon. In Charles Jennens’s libretto, the Old Testament story of the enmity of King Saul towards the victorious commander and future King David becomes a great drama of human passions. “For me, Saul is one of the great pinnacles in Handel’s output”, says Helmuth Rilling.

This music, heard for the first time in 1869 in Leipzig, is a single great emblem of mortality: »Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras« (»For all flesh is as grass«). At the same time, Ein deutsches Requiem is an optimistic work, avoiding all allusions to the punishments of the Last Judgement. The liturgy of the church is replaced by a selection of texts made by Brahms himself. The range of moods, from restrained mourning to spirited confidence and the subtle working of the musical material have made Brahms’s creation into a timeless message about the finality of life.

Firing people with enthusiasm for music has been a key aim for Helmuth Rilling and the Bachakademie from the very beginning. Their main focus was, and continues to be, the interpretation, analysis and explanation of choral-symphonic works. With special concert formats and a committed educational approach, we have expanded our ways of communicating the message of music, particularly to young people, and we also endeavour to reach those who might otherwise only rarely encounter classical music.

In the mid-18th century, the court of the Princes of Schwarzburg in Rudolstadt enjoyed a tremendous cultural flowering. Georg Gebel, its music director and leader of its orchestra, famous since childhood as a musical prodigy, played a considerable part in shaping this. He is said to have completed his compositions »at an unbelievable speed and often with a cup of coffee«. We follow the Berlin musicologist and publisher Dr. Ekkehard Krüger on a virtual journey through time to the largely-unknown region of Thuringia, casting a keen eye on details of biography and publication.

»Jauchzet, ihr Himmel! Erfreue dich, Erde!« So begins Georg Gebel’s »Oratorio for Christmas Eve«. Anyone who thinks of Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium and his »Jauchzet, frohlocket«, will have their opinions confirmed by the sound of trumpets and timpani; the similarity is unmistakable. Nevertheless, Georg Gebel the Younger (1709–53) was an independent spirit who had a decisive influence on musical life as court music director to the Princes of Schwarzburg in Rudolstadt. The Weihnachtsoratorium, composed in 1748 in the galant style, is Gebel’s major work. Bach’s Magnificat completes this unusual programme, and we have been fortunate in engaging Christopher Hogwood, one of the doyens of the early music movement, as conductor.

If there is anyone who is familiar with the music of Franz Liszt, then it is Martin Haselböck, guest conductor of the fourth Akademie concert. He is currently performing all Liszt’s orchestral compositions in their original scoring with his Wiener Akademie Orchestra, and as organist he has recorded the complete organ works of Liszt. Prof. Martin Haselböck discusses his passion for Liszt and St Elizabeth with Dr. Michael Gassmann.

We encounter Elizabeth, the Hungarian King’s daughter in Franz Liszt’s major oratorio, a quite different portrayal to that in Wagner’s Tannhäuser. Liszt portrayed the life of Elizabeth of Thuringia, who was proclaimed a saint shortly after her death (1231) for her acts of mercy, in musical tableaus, placing to the fore a charitable, kindly Elizabeth inspired by her faith. In the work, Liszt set elements of traditional Hungarian sacred liturgy and motifs from Thuringian melodies to a libretto by Otto Roquette, which took as its inspiration the six frescoes of Elizabeth by Moritz von Schwind in the Wartburg. Liszt, a native of Weimar who later took Franciscan orders, worked on his oratorio over a period of five years, before completing it in Rome in 1862. The work received its first performance three years later in Budapest. A rare concert appearance in Stuttgart!

An important visitor from Rome in the Verdi Year: Dr. Markus Engelhardt is Director of the Music History Department of the German Historical Institute in Rome. A musicologist himself, in 1988 he was commissioned by the Bachakademie to edit a movement of the »Messa per Rossini« and has published a translation of the first volume of the series from Italian into German. Who could be more expert on the history of the composition of Verdi’s Requiem?

»I’m not interested in superfluous things. There are so many, far too many Requiem Masses!!! It is pointless writing another...« It is scarcely possible to explain this remark by Verdi, other than in terms of his certain tendency towards coquettishness, for everything was at stake for the composer following both the »Libera me« composed earlier (as a contribution to the »Messa per Rossini«) and his completed »Messa da Requiem«, which he conducted in 1874 following the death of the Italian national poet Alessandro Manzoni in Milan: »I am working on my Mass, and actually with great pleasure. It seems to me that I have become a serious person and am no longer the public’s clown who cries out – with a big trumpet or bass drum – Avanti, avanti, roll up etc.«

The French pianist David Fray is one of the outstanding piano virtuosi of the younger generation. »Piano playing at the highest level,« declared the British newspaper The Guardian, and Spiegel online praised his »singing, agile yet narrative, extrovert piano style« and confirmed that he had played »the most exciting Bach for decades«. Fray has a particular love of the great German composers: Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Haydn, Brahms and Schumann. The French pianist came to public attention in 2006 with a Bach CD. So it is only logical that he should pay homage to the great Bach on his 328th birthday in Stuttgart.

The 6th Akademie concert is the last with Helmuth Rilling. An era comes to an end, and Wolfgang Rihm, Rilling’s long-time colleague and friend, has composed a new work for this occasion. This last Salon of the season is about many things: it’s about a whole life devoted to art, about a long artistic friendship and about a new work, soon to receive its premiere.

A truly special concert featuring two major birthdays (Wolfgang Rihm’s 60th and Helmuth Rilling’s 80th) combines works by the three composers, alongside Bach, to whom Helmuth Rilling is particularly close. Wolfgang Rihm: »In Helmuth Rilling I admire a profound artist and artistic friend. And I am grateful to the Gächinger Kantorei – particularly through him – for some wonderful performances.«

Firing people with enthusiasm for music has been a key aim for Helmuth Rilling and the Bachakademie from the very beginning. Their main focus was, and continues to be, the interpretation, analysis and explanation of choral-symphonic works. With special concert formats and a committed educational approach, we have expanded our ways of communicating the message of music, particularly to young people, and we also endeavour to reach those who might otherwise only rarely encounter classical music.