Oregon Bach Festival: Stuttgart to Eugene
Near Eugene, Oregon
In the summer of nineteen seventy, a young German conductor named Helmuth Rilling arrived at the University of Oregon to teach two master classes: one for conductors, one for organists. He was from Stuttgart, affiliated with the Bach-Collegium there, and not widely known outside of choral music circles. His host was Royce Saltzman, who thought what Rilling was doing with Bach was worth bringing to the Pacific Northwest.
The first event was an informal series of classes and concerts. The audience was small. The music was serious.
The series grew. It was later renamed the Oregon Bach Festival to make its focus and location clearer. By the time Rilling stepped down as artistic director in twenty thirteen, after forty-three years, the Wall Street Journal had called it one of the world's leading music festivals. Rilling had also founded the Internationale Bachakademie in Stuttgart.
What brought a conductor of Rilling's stature back to Eugene every summer for four decades was not money. Eugene offered something that larger cities with more prominent music institutions could not: a concentrated audience of serious listeners, a university willing to partner, and a scale that made every concert feel close.
