Helmuth Rilling (1933-2026)

The influential German conductor and academic Helmuth Rilling died at the end of last week, leaving an enormous legacy particularly in the world of early music and above all in Bach scholarship and performance practice.

Born in Stuttgart, and later studying in Rome and Siena, Rilling’s inclination towards choral music showed itself early; the Gächinger Kantorei he set up in 1954 was associated with him for most of his career, until he stepped aside in 2013 in favour of Hans-Christoph Rademann.

Frequently heard performing hand in hand with the Kantorei was the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, which Rilling established eleven years later to facilitate the performance of choral works with orchestra. Between them the two groups participated actively in cross-Iron-Curtain cultural diplomacy, touring in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the 1960s and later in Poland and the USSR.

The name of Stuttgart is ever-present in any overview of Rilling’s career; not merely setting up new high-quality ensembles but founding the Internationale Bachakademie there in 1981, and later the Festival Ensemble Stuttgart and the Junges Stuttgarter Bach Ensemble in the early twenty-first century. Across the Atlantic, he also endeared himself to audiences in the USA through the Oregon Bach Festival, which he set up in 1970 in collaboration with Royce Saltzman and led for over four decades - and which arguably served as the model for the Bachakademie.

The other name inextricably interwoven with Rilling’s own is, of course, that of JS Bach. Over the course of a quarter of a century, the Edition Bachakademie saw Rilling record the composer's entire output - 172 CDs and over a thousand works. Inspired into action by the relative absence of recordings of the cantatas in particular (in response to which he was the first, in 1985, to complete a full recorded cycle), it was perhaps inevitable that his interest in improving that provision would blossom into an encyclopedic, comprehensive project. 

Rilling’s cantata project was, for some, eclipsed in part by the exciting new developments pioneered by Harnoncourt and Leonhardt, both dynamos of the historically-informed performance movement; his own style remained relatively unchanged, and he himself notably stood out as a steady and calm rock amid the stormy arguments that characterised the HIP scene as it gathered pace. Unswayed by radicals on either side, his insistence that more than one ‘correct’ approach could exist was unusual even then, and remains a valuable lesson today - in many domains, far beyond just questions of Baroque interpretation.

Although Bach looms hugely over Rilling’s entire career - not unreasonably - it would be remiss not to mention his interest in other eras and traditions, with acclaimed recordings of Franck, Britten and Liszt, not to mention giving the world premiere of the collaborative Messa per Rossini shortly after its rediscovery in the 1980s. His interest in new music was demonstrated particularly clearly in his decision to mark the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death by commissioning new Passion settings from Rihm, Gubaidulina, Golijov and Tan.

Helmuth Rilling died at the age of 92 in the presence of his family in Leonberg, near Stuttgart. He is survived by his daughter Rahel Maria Rilling.