EUGENE - Watching Helmuth Rilling at a rehearsal tonight in Hult Center
as he was conducting Pietro Platania's "Sanctus" *without a score*, I
was shaking my head in disbelief, as I often do when encountering this
remarkable man at work.
Beginning with a complete set of performances and recordings of all Bach's
known works, running major festivals on three continents, commissioning
major new works (including a complete set of new Passions), conducting
major portions of the Brahms, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Haydn and Mozart
repertory, Rilling is now opening the 23rd Oregon Bach Festival with the
music of Platania (1828-1897).
Add to that Antonio Buzzolla (1815-1871), Antonio Bazzini (1818-1897),
Carlo Pedrotti (1817-1893), Antonio Cagnoni (1828-1893), Frederico Ricci
(1809-1877), Alessandro Nini (1808-1880), Raimondo Boucheron (1800-1876),
Carlo Coccia (1782-1873), Gaetano Gaspari (1808-1881), Lauro Rossi
(1812-1885), Teodulo Mabellini (1817-1897), and, yes, Giuseppe Verdi
(1813-1901).
This, of course, is the "Messa per Rossini," the product of a Verdi-led
coalition of then-famous (now unknown) Italian composers paying tribute
to Rossini who died in 1868. "Messa" was completed the next year, and
then disappeared, without a performance, for more than a century. It was
Rilling who dusted off the work and gave its world premiere in Stuttgart,
in 1988. The American premiere followed a year later, in New York.
There are two, contradictory, first impressions of "Messa" - are these
unknowns the best composers who could be commissioned in a golden age of
music in Italy, and why did the pretty good, very large work they managed
to put together hide in obscurity, for a Bach specialist to discover and
rescue it? I doubt if there are any answers available to this musical
riddle.
Another Rilling specialty is his support of young singers. Thomas
Quasthoff was only one among those he championed successfully. "Messa"
is a good example of Rilling's large-scale introduction of new and newish
voices. The soloists are soprano Amanda Mace (a very promising young
singer from New Jersey), alto Susan Platts, Dutch tenor Albert Bonnema,
Armenian baritone Mkritch Babajanyan, and a very young, impressive bass
from Moscow, Michail Schelomianski, making his US debut. What Kurt Herbert
Adler used to do in San Francisco, Rilling is doing - on a small scale, but
effectively - in the middle of agricultural Oregon.
Platts, at 28, is already a veteran of the Rilling stable. The Canadian
mezzo - with a well-centered, powerfully projected voice - made her US
debut here three years ago, and sang the B Minor Mass in Houston with
Rilling, Christoph Eschenbach in the audience. This fall, Platts - who
is still reluctant to switch from oratorio to opera - will move in that
direction as she is featured at the season-opening concert of Eschenbach's
Orchestra de Paris, in Debussy's "The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian" and Act
3 of "Parsifal." To this fan who's been urging her to sing opera, Platts
points out that if she really did that, she would do Act 2, but this way
she can do opera and "get away with two lines."
The Paris cast will also feature Dominique Labelle, Nadine Denize, John
Keyes, Dietrich Henschel, Kristinn Sigmundsson, and Isabelle Huppert as
narrator.
Janos Gereben/SF
[log in to unmask]
|