Bach for more

It's happened every summer since 1970, when the Oregon Bach Festival had the far more organic and modest moniker of the Summer Festival of Music. Droves of classical music fans—and droves of tourists perhaps looking for a bit of cultural uplift—descend upon Eugene for one of the top music festivals in the US. And at least in the 1990s, the festival has altered its focus on a biyearly basis, focusing one year on new music or new commissions, and the next year on the tried-and-true classical war horses, always performed with Stuttgart-born conductor Helmuth Rilling.

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Oregon Bach Festival
Eugene, Oregon
June 25-July 11

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Rilling, now artistic director as well as conductor, has strong roots in Bach and as an organist, which he first came to perform in the festival's unlikely inaugural year. Since then, he's become identified solidly enough with Bach that Hanssler, the small German label that releases virtually all the Oregon Bach Festival recordings, is devoting a massive CD set of the entire Bach canon to Rilling's interpretations.

As Rilling's stock has risen, so has the festival's. In the years after his debut at the Summer Festival of Music, the annual event was redubbed the Oregon Bach Festival to give it some geographic exactness and the added cache associated with the 18th-century composer. Eugene, which became a mecca for Grateful Dead fans during these years (thanks to the band's frequent stops in the city), might well have needed a bit of Bach to give the town and the University of Oregon's burgeoning School of Music some notches in its belt. And the town responded.

The newly minted OBF made its home in the modest Beall Hall on the UO campus for all of the 1970s, growing into its international stature around the early 1980s, when the Hult Center for Performing Arts opened. The large Silva Hall, with its 2,500-seat capacity, became the rule for the festival's larger events. What with all those seats to fill, the OBF also incorporated a strong PR mission, which it's adhered to and excelled in, drawing dozens of thousands every year—and increasing its appetite and ability to execute important commissions.

In the last few years, the Oregon Bach Festival has wowed crowds with a particularly fertile string of commissions. The OBF amazed audiences in 1994 with the premiere of Arvo P䲴's Litany, recorded with immeasurable success after its Eugene premiere for ECM Records. The festival's focus on the Americas in 1996 brought a wide array of vocal pieces inspired by Bach's cantatas—with Argentine Osvaldo Golijov (Oceana), Canadian Linda Bouchard (Songs for an Acrobat), and US composer Stephen Jaffe presenting new works. Last year's runaway creative apex was Krzysztof Penderecki's Credo, with the baritone role sung flawlessly by Thomas Quasthoff.

Of course, a steady diet of newly commissioned works—even from the likes of the commercially successful Arvo P䲴 or the once-maverick Penderecki—will earn critical praise and a far more likely waning crowd. So the OBF folks do a smart thing. They program works from the standard classical repertory every other year, always providing strong staples of Bach but bolstering their namesake with more mainstream works. But even the most cynical new-music aficionado will note the breadth of the OBF's offerings in 1999, the festival's 30th anniversary. With microphones catching it all, you'll get the Bach Double Harpsichord Concertos, not exactly everyday fare even for Bach fanatics. On the other hand, the festival opens June 25 with a splash: The festival chamber orchestra performs the Brandenburg Concertos, probably the best known of Bach's works. As usual with OBF, however, the Bach is but a small part of the story.

As ever, this year's festival is gleefully all over the map. There's a day for American works, when young conductor/pianist Jeffrey Kahane will present Samuel Barber's oft-programmed (but no less beautiful) Adagio for Strings alongside Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms. Then there's the millennium-capping extravaganza: Rilling leading more than 100 musicians, a double chorus, and more in Mahler's Resurrection Symphony.

The Mahler might well be programmed as a closer to complement Dvo(breve)r᫧s Stabat Mater and the Mozart Requiem, left unfinished at the composer's death and presented by the OBF as part of its "Discovery Series," where works and lectures go hand in hand in an effort to illuminate key aspects of the works and their performances. The biggest surprise in this vein is the Russian folk group Trio Vornezh. Brought to the festival to entertain in impromptu settings, the group's mixture of traditional folk repertoire and "folked up" renditions of chamber works has taken it from quiet little gigs to this year's extravaganza in Silva Hall.

Aside from all the music, which could be detailed to granular levels (we've not even mentioned Robert Kapilow's polystylistic rendition of Green Eggs and Ham), the OBF is an ideal train trip; hop Amtrak, disembark in cozy Eugene, then concert-hop your way to bliss.

Other events

Summer classical programming works best when it's lighter or weirder than usual. What would lure audiences, especially sun-starved Seattleites, into a concert hall? Novelty helps, or the promise of ear candy—Beethoven's Ninth wouldn't quite do it, but his Wellington's Victory or some contredanses might. In the following listings, I'm concentrating on those categories, and I'm not censoring my pro-contemporary-music bias either. As for the rest, expect Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Dvo(breve)r᫠by the barrelful. Most of these festivals have Web sites where you can check out every last detail.—Gavin Borchert