MUSIC REVIEW : RILLING, OREGON FORCES IN B-MINOR MASS

One oasis of stability in our changeable musical world is the Bach festival; wherever it exists, it tends to remain what it was when created. From Pennsylvania to California, examples abound. At the Oregon Bach Festival in Eugene, the 15-year-old institution has certainly grown. But, like its brethren, it has changed slowly.

There could be no surprise, then, that Helmuth Rilling’s Oregon forces, which presented Bach’s B-minor Mass in the Hollywood Bowl on Wednesday night, were essentially the same people--the same individuals, mind you--who delivered the same work in the same place, two years ago next week.

Or that the splendid musical results, as regards pacing, drama, style, clarity and textual point, emerged much the same. Forget that the outdoor locale, with its sound-distractions and sound-distortions, tends to diminish those results, through simple evaporation. What a smallish audience of 5,123 listeners received at this event has to be considered definitive.

Rilling’s interpretive scheme in the Mass--a scheme bolstered by stylish details, utter clarification of the musical and Latin texts and expert delivery of the vocal and instrumental solos--is one of accumulative power and impact. It follows, of course, the progress of the text of the Mass, and thus reaches its climax, but not its culmination, in the Credo.

Here, the Oregon ensembles and soloists achieved their most poignant moments. The two massive choruses that begin the movement emerged solid but transparent; the duet, “Et in unum Deum,” as sung by Costanza Cuccaro and Julia Hamari, reached a plateau of religious serenity; in “Et incarnatus est” and “Crucifixus,” the chorus revealed shades of emotion and dynamic gradations often overlooked in these crucial sections.

Then, without any hint of self-consciousness, Rilling led the performance directly into “Et resurrexit” with open eyes, no surprise and an inevitability that took the breath away. Baritone Jan Opalach sang “Et in spiritum sanctum” with the clear tone and light touch we had missed in his earlier solo. Finally, the closing chorus again revealed several hues of seriousness.

Besides Cuccaro, Hamari and Opalach, the other vocal soloist was tenor Scot Weir, deputizing for Aldo Baldin, who was unable to appear because of illness. The instrumental soloists included flutists Sibylle Keller and Gary Woodward; oboists Ingo Goritzki and Allan Vogel; violinist Lawrence Maves; bassoonists Kenneth Munday and John Steinmetz; trumpeters Rob Roy McGregor, George Recker and Richard Berg, and hornist Johannes Ritzkowsky.