Join internationally-renowned conductor Helmuth Rilling on June 17, 2017, for a choral extravaganza at the magnificent Berliner Dom. Singers from across the globe are invited to join a grand festival chorus to sing the music of Mendelssohn, including Wir glauben all an einen Gott and Psalm 42 Wie der Hirsch schreit, and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Eine Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott, in celebration of 500 Years of Reformation.
Helmuth Rilling, born in 1933 in Stuttgart, is acclaimed worldwide as a conductor, pedagogue and Bach scholar. In 1954, he founded the internationally recognized Gächinger Kantorei choir, which joined forces with the Bach Collegium Stuttgart as its regular orchestral partner eleven years later. It was at this time that Professor Rilling began his intensive work with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Based on a Baroque design by Johann Boumann in the late 1740’s, the Berliner Dom is the largest and most impressive religious space in the German capital. It was long known as the “Protestant St. Peter’s” (after St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican). To celebrate the union of Prussia’s Lutheran and Reformed communities, the Berliner Dom was renovated in a Neo-Classical style in 1822 by the Berlin architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The current Neo-Baroque design is the work of architect Julius Raschdorff, by orders of German Emperor Wilhelm II, with work beginning in 1894 and ending in 1905. After being severely damaged from World War II bombing, the cathedral began reconstruction in 1975 and was fully restored in 1993.
The cathedral’s historic Sauer organ is heard twice daily during worship, on Sundays in the religious services, in the vespers on Saturdays, and in numerous concerts. The Berliner Domkantorei and the Staats- und Domchor Berlin make their home in the Cathedral and sing for the cathedral’s religious services and many concerts.
Join us in Germany for this once in a lifetime opportunity to celebrate the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation at the Luther 2017 Choral Festival!