The Oregon Bach Festival opens this year on June 25 with Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, led by Artistic Director Matthew Halls at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon. In addition to the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra, performing at the eighteen-day festival for the first time will be young musicians from the festival’s new Berwick Academy orchestra specializing in historically informed performance practice. Academy musicians will study with festival faculty, and will perform an all-Beethoven concert with soprano Tamara Wilson and violinist Monica Huggett; a Baroque recital with festival faculty members; and a Bach concert featuring the Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 and Orchestral Suite No. 3. Also planned at the festival are several large-orchestra works: Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, Mozart’s Symphony No. 25, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”). Festival founder Helmuth Rilling will lead a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion, and there will be performances of vocal music by Arvo Pärt; lectures on Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and St. John Passion; and a “Seven Deadly Sins” pops program featuring vocalist Storm Large, the vocal quartet Hudson Shad, and the Oregon Bach Festival orchestra.
Posted June 24, 2015
