Joshua Rifkin
Joshua Rifkin ( born April 22, 1944 in New York) is an American pianist, harpsichordist, conductor and musicologist. In 1978 he founded The Bach Ensemble. Since 2011 he has been artistic director of the Bach: Arnstadt summer. The music encyclopedia The music in past and present ( MGG ) Barenreiter / Metzler Verlag counts him " the most important Bach interpreters of the present."
Study and career
He studied with Vincent Persichetti at the Juilliard School with the degree BS (1964). Further studies he undertook with Gustave Reese at New York University (1964-1966) and at the University of Göttingen ( 1966-1967 ). Then he studied with Arthur Mendel, Lewis Lockwood, Milton Babbitt and Ernst Oster at Princeton University. He completed his studies in 1968 with a M.F.A. ( Master of Fine Arts ) from.
Rifkin played as a conductor and soloist with renowned orchestras in the U.S., Europe, Israel, Australia and Japan. Among the orchestras with which he has worked, including the English Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Israel Camerata Jerusalem; the St. Louis Symphony, San Francisco Symphony and Victorian State Symphony Melbourne; the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Prague Chamber Orchestra; the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento, the Jerusalem Symphony, the Solistas de México, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia, the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa and the Houston Symphony. His repertoire ranges from Monteverdi to Handel and Mozart to Richard Strauss and Stravinsky; Nor missing Gershwin, Copland and the recent modernity. Another field Rifkin are his insightful interpretations of ragtime music by Scott Joplin particularly, with whom he very much contributed in the 1970s to the revival of ragtime music.
Current work
The concert years 2008 to 2012 were mainly devoted to Johann Sebastian Bach and led the musicians in the river cities of Weimar and Arnstadt, to Antwerp, Boston and Japan: On the program, the Brandenburg Concertos, various cantatas and Bach's St. Matthew Passion were with the ensembles Cambridge Concentus Boston and Kunitachi Ibach Collegium. In the upper church Arnstadt, the workplace as organist of Johann Sebastian Bach's great uncle Heinrich Bach 1641-1692, Joshua Rifkin in 2009 led two of his reconstructed concerts Johann Sebastian Bach's Concerto for Oboe, 2 Violins, Viola and Continuo in E flat major, reconstructed after BWV 49, 169 and 1053 and Concerto for Oboe, Violino concertato, Violino ripieno, Viola and Continuo in C minor, reconstructed from BWV 1060. a highlight was Rifkin's intense preoccupation with the cantatas of Bach in December 2010 in Leuven / Belgium in a solo performance of the Christmas Oratorio: the cantatas 1-3 in the interpretation of Taverner Consort & Players under the direction of Andrew Parrott, the cantatas 4-6 interpreted by The Bach Ensemble Joshua Rifkin and for further comparison finally Sigiswald Kuijken and his ensemble La Petite Bande with Christmas cantatas BWV 122, BWV 57, BWV 97 and BWV 151 in consequence of the Arnstadt concert 2009 2011 was the Bach Festival: Summer - a year in August - to Arnstadt and traveling life, its Artistic Director Rifkin holds.
Rifkin and the Early Music
The focus of his work is early music. In addition to his work with The Bach Ensemble and the common recording of Bach's B Minor Mass, Bach's Magnificat and numerous cantatas, he directed from 1992 to 1997, the annual Summer School of Early Music in Brixen / Italy. He led Monteverdi's ' L' Orfeo at the Theater Basel; In 2001 he made his debut at the Munich State Opera with a new production of Purcell's Dido and Aenea and Handel's Acis and Galatea. He was the musical director of the modern world premiere of Alessandro Scarlatti Venere, Amore e Ragione in Chicago; he conducted Mozart's Requiem and polychoral Psalms of Heinrich Schütz at the Festival Oude Muziek in Utrecht; still, he had guest appearances with the ensemble Gradus ad Parnassum Vienna, the Schola Cantorum, the Norsk Barokorkest Oslo and the Bach Concertino Osaka, with whom he also has its complement of the Bach Cantata BWV 216 recorded. With the Cappella Pratensis Rifkin intensively studied Renaissance polyphony apart, this cooperation resulted in a CD recording. In the 1990s he also recorded with the Cappella Coloniensis, the Baroque Orchestra of Cologne's WDR, two CDs with works by Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Rifkin and his research on Johann Sebastian Bach
Early on, Rifkin began an intensive Bach source studies. One of his first discoveries was in 1975 that the St. Matthew Passion was not as previously assumed in 1729, but was already premiered on Good Friday in 1727. In 2000, Rifkin comes in an essay in the Bach-Jahrbuch to the conclusion that the cantata Now is come salvation, and strength, BWV 50, which raised questions for some time, not Bach is due. Published in 2006, Rifkin A Critical Edition of Bach's B Minor Mass by Breitkopf & Härtel. In the now well-known version of the H- Moll - Messe parts of an exhibition of 1733, the first version of the Kyrie and Gloria were posthumously incorporated by Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. In his critical edition Rifkin has published for the first time the version that strictly adheres to Bach's last recordings from 1748-50. 2007 Rifkin's new edition of the Dunedin Consort under the direction of John A. Butt was recorded on CD.
Fundamental impact on the creek reception took Rifkin early 1980s with an article in which he proved that Johann Sebastian Bach occupied the choral cantatas, masses, passions and oratorios usually with only one singer per voice. He broke radically with an interpretation idea, which was marked by the romantic notions of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the Philharmonic ideal of the 19th century. His thesis initially met in the musical public on defense and lack of understanding. But then Andrew Parrott Rifkin documents and reasoning adopted. In 2000, the former Rifkin opponent released his book, The Essential Bach Choir, the 2003 under the title Bach Choir - For new understanding also appeared in German. In this paper Parrott published again Rifkin's essay from 1981, meticulously discussed the pros and cons of his remarks and laid open all sources. To follow all the arguments for the soloists thesis of a general public were available. In Anglo-Saxon countries, in France, Belgium and the Netherlands Rifkin and Parrott's research results are widely accepted today.
In German-speaking countries, they are still in doubt.
Teaching
Joshua Rifkin has held professorships at various universities such as, among others, at the universities of Harvard and Yale. He currently teaches in the Department of Renaissance and Baroque music at Boston University. Rifkin always introduces master classes and workshops at renowned music festivals of early music.
Awards (selection)
- Dr. H.C. the Technical University of Dortmund ( 1999)
- Lichtenberg Medal ( 2013)