Helmuth Rilling, Who Recorded Huge Swaths of Bach, Dies at 92

Helmuth Rilling, an eloquent, widely esteemed German musician who evangelized for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and was the first conductor to record all of that composer’s sacred cantatas, died on Wednesday in Warmbronn, Germany. He was 92. The International Bach Academy Stuttgart, which he founded in 1981, announced his death.

He led the Gächinger Kantorei and the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, ensembles he founded, and his survey of the nearly 200 surviving sacred cantatas occupied him from 1969 to 1985. The project featured singers such as Arleen Auger and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and, he said, began as an act of devotion rather than an effort at encyclopedism.

Rilling’s Bach recordings ranged from the St. Matthew Passion to small chorale settings and were noted for a steadfast, smooth style that some critics later found old-fashioned as the historically informed performance movement took hold.

Germany, Warmbronn

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