Music Transformations Headline 06 OBF

It took 25 years for German filmmaker Bastian Clevé to open a door to eternity. Oregon Bach Festival audiences will be the first in the U.S. to see the view when “The Sound of Eternity,” Clevé’s cinematic interpretation of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, is presented full-scale, full-screen, and with full choral-orchestral forces as part of the 37th festival, June 30-July 16 in Eugene.

The multimedia presentation is one of three updates of classic works under the Festival's 2006 theme of "transformations" which also includes Robert Levin's 2005 completion of the Mozart Mass in C Minor and pianist Uri Caine's reimagining of Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Helmuth Rilling, Festival artistic director, conducts the music for Clevé’s “Eternity,” as he did for its world premiere in Frankfurt last September. The two-hour movie consists of 27short films that match the Mass’s movements, with imagery of alpine glaciers and peaceful valleys, pulsating modern cities and majestic ancient architecture. Thematically, the segments follow the pilgrimage of mankind in its search for perfection, spirituality, and meaning.

Clevé, who directed and produced more than 40 short films in his native Germany as well as film and television in Hollywood, said hearing the Mass for the first time 25 years ago “struck him like lightning,” an experience that turned into an obsession to bring the monumental music to the screen.

“The Sound of Eternity” premieres Sunday, July 9. Rilling leads a music-only performance of the Mass in B Minor the next night in Eugene’s new first Baptist Church.

The Festival opens with Levin’s version of the Mozart Mass in C Minor, the first of four concerts that pay tribute to the Viennese giant for his 250th anniversary. The Mass was left incomplete when Mozart died. For over two centuries, it was recorded and performed only as a fragment. On commission from the Carnegie Hall Foundation, Levin, a Harvard-based musicologist and Mozart expert, assembled the clues that enabled him to complete the work.

Rilling conducted the first performance of his completion in Carnegie Hall, which critic Allan Kozinn of The New York Times called “a glorious, fully Mozartean vision.”

The music of Mozart flows freely through the Festival, with pianist/conductor Jeffrey Kahane soloing and conducting three of Mozart’s piano concertos and a symphony in two concerts:
• Concerto in A major, K. 488, Symphony in G minor, K. 550, Concerto No. 21, K. 467 on July 2.
• Piano Concerto K. 482 in E flat major and the Beethoven Mass in C Major on July 5.

Rilling leads a performance of Mozart’s Coronation Mass as part of the afternoon Discovery Series of lecture-concerts. The Requiem, another of Levin’s Mozart restorations, is the Festival finale.

New York jazzman Uri Caine brings a nine-piece group to the Hult Center July 7 for The Goldberg Variations Reimagined, using Bach’s classic set of variations on a theme as a departure point, interspersing the original compositions with his own voicings for horns, strings, gospel singers, and a disc-spinning DJ. Caine created the work in 2000 for a Bach 250th anniversary event.

With masses from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, Rilling opens the door for audiences to explore different moods, settings, and forms of the central liturgical text. On July 14, he records Haydn’s Creation Mass live as the first work in a multi-year CD project.

Other main events include seven “Intimate Evenings” of chamber music concerts:
• A piano recital by Levin July 1, programming Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses op. 54, the Bach Aria variata in A minor, and the Dutilleux Piano Sonata.
• Bach’s Circle baroque ensemble July 3, performing the Concerto in A minor and Quartett in D minor by Telemann; the Concerto in D major, P. 201 by Vivaldi; the Sonata for flute and continuo in E minor, BWV 1034 by Bach; the Concerto in E minor by Boismortier; and the Piece de Clavecin en Concerts #3 by Rameau.
• Russian classical virtuosos Trio Voronezh July 8 in a program of favorite classical and Russian folk pieces
• Soprano Maria Jette with oboist Allan Vogel and trumpeter Guy Few July 12 performing Bach’s Wedding Cantata, cantatas BWV 84 and BWV 51, and the recently recovered Bach aria, Alles mit Gott.
• The Szymanowski Quartet, emerging classical stars from Poland in two performances July 13 with the Mozart String Quartet KV 590, the Szymanowski String Quartet op. 56 No.2, and the Schubert String Quartet in G-Major D887; and July 15 with an Adagio and Fugue by Mozart, the Shostakovich String Quartet No.3, and the Beethoven Quartet op.18 No.2.

On the choral side, the Festival lineup includes a showcase performance July 6 by the high school singers of the Festival’s Youth Choral Academy, conducted by Anton Armstrong of St. Olaf College.

Swarthmore music professor Michael Marissen delivers a talk on “Bach’s Spirituality” in the first annual Hinkle Distinguished Lecture July 5.

Completing the schedule are more than a dozen free events including children’s concerts, and organ recital series, and meet-the-artist sessions. In all, the Festival presents nearly 50 events in its 17 days, anticipating a worldwide audience of more than 30,000.

Concerts take pace at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts and on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene.

Tickets range from $49-$8. For more, click on oregonbachfestival.com or call (800) 457-1486.