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BY BRETT CAMPBELL
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All proceeds go to:
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$15 a
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Big
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The Vipers
w/ special guest
Skip Jones
Gaye Lee Russell
& Her Bad-Ass Band
Ticket Outlets: Junction City: Habitat for Humanity offi ce 585 Greenwood, Emerald Valley Compounding Pharmacy,
Pfeiffer Winery, Citizens Bank | Harrisburg: Citizens Bank | Eugene: CD World • House of Records
Online: daistickets.com/bluesbuild
No-host bar. (No outside alcohol) • Lawn chairs, blankets & picnic baskets welcome. Food for purchase.
541-998-0548 • visit www.jchmhabitat.org • Pfeiffer Winery at www.pfeiffervineyards.com
TIC
STA KETS
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5 0 EVE NTS
$
15
June 29 » July 15
A Child of our Time
July 7
MATTHEW HALLS conductor
HULT CENTER
The 5 Browns
July 12
Classical faves and Hollywood hits
HULT CENTER
Tango Harmonica
July 13
JOE POWERS Tango Quintet
BEALL HALL
St. Matthew
Passion
July 15
HELMUTH RILLING conductor
HULT CENTER
541
682.5000
#bachfest
OREGONBACHFESTIVAL .COM
24 JULY 5, 2012 EUGENE WEEKLY
HELMUTH RILLING
Leavings and Legacies
Bach Festival continues gems small and large
T
his summer finds Oregon’s biggest
classical music festival in
transition. Oregon Bach Festival
founding artistic director Helmuth
Rilling retires after next summer’s
festival, when incoming replacement
Matthew Halls takes over the University
of Oregon program. Halls is here this
summer, soaking up the full festival
experience and learning about the city, the
audience, the venues, musicians and
everything else he needs to inform his own
vision of OBF 2.0. He’ll also have a
chance to discuss that vision at length with
fifth-year festival executive director John
Evans.
Even as a potentially exciting OBF
future takes shape, the present offers some
highlights. A few concerts have already
sold out, so it’s best to check the festival
website (oregonbachfestival.com), which
also lists a wide array of interesting films,
talks, seminars and other programs not
covered here.
Rilling’s greatest legacy may prove to
be his masterful Discovery Series, a
combination of workshops for rising
young conductors, performances of core
repertoire and explications of the music by
a conductor who’s devoted half a century
to it. This year, the series is devoted to one
of J.S. Bach’s most powerful works, the St.
Matthew Passion, and the adventure
continues July 5 and July 10 at UO’s Beall
Hall. That evening, pianist Ya-Fei
Chuang’s piano recital features some of
the most beautiful piano music ever written
— preludes by Claude Debussy, plus
compositions by George Gershwin, a
Gershwin tribute by Earl Wild and a
Chopin sonata.
Unfortunately, Angela Hewitt’s July
14 solo recital of the Goldberg Variations
is sold out, though you can hear plenty of
piano at OBF’s July 12 Hult Center concert
featuring the Five Browns. The siblings
will play show tunes and movie soundtrack
gems, but also enough meaty music — by
Scriabin, Milhaud, Stravinsky and more
— to satisfy classical fans.
John Scott, one of the world’s most
acclaimed organists, and the music director
of New York’s St. Thomas Church Fifth
Avenue, plays one of J.S. Bach’s grandest
creations Friday, July 6: the 1739 collection
of 27 major compositions for organ known
as the Organ Mass, or Keyboard Practice
(Clavier-Ubung) III. Local organist Julia
Brown will play the music of Bach’s
North German contemporaries at Central
Lutheran Church at noon Friday, July 13.
Halls himself takes the solo keyboard
spotlight in another OBF recital July 9 at
Beall Hall, performing one of Bach’s
masterpieces, the Chromatic Fantasy and
Fugue, and other solo harpsichord works,
along with two of the festival namesake’s
great harpsichord concertos (both of which
the composer arranged from earlier works)
with players from the festival orchestra.
That concert and the following night’s
Debussy soiree are my top small-scale
picks for this summer’s festival.
That latter show, at Beall Hall,
combines Chuang and David Riley’s
performances of the French composer’s
piano works (including the inevitable
Clair de Lune) as well as some of his
gorgeous settings of poetry by Verlaine
and other French symbolists, including the
shimmering Songs of Bilitis, sung by
soprano Tamara Wilson, alto Anita
Krause and tenor Tom Randle.
Three large-scale choral programs —
the festival’s hallmark over the years —
remain at the Hult Center’s Silva Hall.
Halls leads Saturday’s highly recommended
production of one of Bach’s less often
heard short masses along with a major
20th-century choral work — unaccountably
never before performed in Oregon — the
1944 oratorio A Child of our Time, a
poignant response to the devastation of
World War II and Nazi pogroms.
The great British composer Michael
Tippett reworked one of J.S. Bach’s
mighty passions — but instead of using an
18th-century Lutheran chorale, Tippett
employed American spirituals like “Deep
River.”
On Sunday, July 8, the 85 young singers
of the Stangeland Family Youth
Choral Academy will celebrate the
admirable institution’s 15th anniversary by
singing a Bach motet, one of Handel’s
stirring Coronation Anthems, works by
Mendelssohn, Copland and other
composers, including a new work
commissioned from academy alum
Stanford Scriven.
The festival closes Sunday, July 15,
with Rilling leading a potent choral
orchestral masterpiece, Bach’s St. Matthew
Passion.
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