Purcell Choir, Orfeo Orchestra & Helmuth Rilling at Palace of the Arts

This is the path which the now 79-year-old Helmuth Rilling took when, at the age of 21 in 1954, he founded the Gächinger Kantorei choir, followed by the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart orchestra a decade later. At the same time, given the Leipzig master’s status as one of the most influential figures in the emergence of modern European music, the process of becoming one of the leading interpreters of Bach’s work over the ensuing decades inevitably also brought him into contact with the oratorical works of other composers. ?The present New Year’s Concert breaks with tradition at the Palace of Arts somewhat in that, contrary to previous years, the audience will hear not The Creation, but instead The Seasons, Haydn’s other late, secular oratorio, which was premièred in 1801. Alongside the big-name foreign guest conductor and Hungarian orchestra and choir, the common denominator is György Vashegyi, founder of both the Purcell Choir and the Orfeo Orchestra, the latter known for its use of period instruments. Vashegyi learned the secrets of the craft of early music performance at master classes given by Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Helmuth Rilling, and, thus equipped, built his own ensembles. Marlis Petersen, the evening’s soprano soloist, is a many-faceted personality who has won competitions as a singer of both musicals and chansons, and also showed considerable proficiency in jazz and step dancing before committing herself to singing professionally as a student of Szilvia Geszty. Bernhard Berchtold has worked with Rilling on numerous occasions, while Gábor Bretz – winner of a Queen Elisabeth Prize in Brussels in 2008 – is one of the most talented young Hungarian bass singers.