Philippe Herreweghe

Conductor Philippe Herreweghe pioneered the performance of <a href="spotify:artist:5aIqB5nVVvmFsvSdExz408">Bach</a>'s choral music on period instruments and remains renowned in the field. He is the leader of several connected ensembles that perform music from the late Renaissance to the contemporary era. Herreweghe is the founder of the <a href="spotify:artist:17BdLN9q8RRQQqyklLwac1">Collegium Vocale Gent</a>, one of the most durable early music ensembles still in existence. His vast recording catalog includes Gesualdo: Silenzio mio - Il quarto libro di madrigali.

Herreweghe was born in Gent (or Ghent), Belgium, on May 2, 1947. He concurrently studied medicine and psychiatry at the University of Gent, in addition to studying piano with Marcel Gazelle at the university's conservatory. During that time, in 1969, he founded the <a href="spotify:artist:17BdLN9q8RRQQqyklLwac1">Collegium Vocale Gent</a> (1969). Conductors <a href="spotify:artist:0AeOzXbHJu8q2xqILEOLEO">Nikolaus Harnoncourt</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:0KmvC3SVTF02l4ueknQCsW">Gustav Leonhardt</a> took notice of the young artist and promptly invited him and his newly organized ensemble to collaborate with them on a recording project that would document the entire catalog of <a href="spotify:artist:5aIqB5nVVvmFsvSdExz408">Bach</a>'s cantatas. Continuing his education at the conservatory, Herreweghe studied the harpsichord with Johan Huys and organ with Gabriel Verschraegen.

Ambitious, to say the least, Herreweghe formed numerous ensembles that each respectively acted as a performance vehicle for specific genres and periods of composition, resulting in numerous recordings for the <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Harmonia+Mundi%22">Harmonia Mundi</a> label. Herreweghe's Ensemble Vocale Elysées specialized and concentrated on the work of <a href="spotify:artist:5aIqB5nVVvmFsvSdExz408">Bach</a> and his predecessors. The Ensemble La Chapelle Royale (founded with Philippe Beaussant in 1977) focused on music from the French Baroque, as well as vocal scores from the Classical and Romantic eras; with that group, Herreweghe released an early digital recording, Dumont: Motets pour la chapelle du roy, issued by the <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Harmonia+Mundi%22">Harmonia Mundi</a> label in 1989. Through much of his long career, Herreweghe would remain associated with <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Harmonia+Mundi%22">Harmonia Mundi</a>. The Ensemble Vocale Européen (founded 1989) concentrated on Renaissance polyphony, while the <a href="spotify:artist:2YWNmklKbU5v9RpVsfHWbU">Orchestre des Champs-Elysées</a> (founded 1991), an original instrument ensemble, performed literature from the Classical and Romantic periods. Herreweghe divides his time in thirds and spends one with early music, one with the Romantic repertoire, and the last third with contemporary compositions. In an interview with La Scena Musicale (November 1997), the conductor described his ensembles as a "poupée russe, you know, those Russian dolls that fit one inside the other." The core Baroque group is <a href="spotify:artist:17BdLN9q8RRQQqyklLwac1">Collegium Vocale</a>. For bigger works and French Baroque pieces, it may be enlarged as <a href="spotify:artist:1C3XEupIPUifPP8v7Y0UPQ">La Chapelle Royale</a>, and for Classical and Romantic-era music, still more players are added to form the <a href="spotify:artist:2YWNmklKbU5v9RpVsfHWbU">Orchestre des Champs-Elysées</a>.

In addition to all his own groups, Herreweghe has guest conducted many prestigious ensembles, including the <a href="spotify:artist:2HqNckz4bPVT37fWkhugTZ">Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra</a> of Amsterdam, the <a href="spotify:artist:6uRJnvQ3f8whVnmeoecv5Z">Berlin Philharmonic</a>, and the <a href="spotify:artist:6iyKy3RT5yvMRgKJK54Pzr">Orchestra of St. Luke's</a> in New York City, among others. Herreweghe assumed the position of music director of the Festival of Saintes in 1982. In the year 1992 alone, Herreweghe released 23 albums. The conductor, nominated for Musical Personality of the Year (1990), has received many more awards, including European Musician of the Year (1991), Cultural Ambassador of Flanders with his <a href="spotify:artist:17BdLN9q8RRQQqyklLwac1">Collegium Chorale</a> (1993), and the order of Officer of Arts and Letters (1994). Herreweghe assumed the post of music director of the Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra in 1997 and, beginning in 2002, served as its principal conductor (it is now the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, and Herreweghe remains the group's honorary conductor). From 2008 to 2013, he was the principal guest conductor of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic.

He has continued to record for <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Harmonia+Mundi%22">Harmonia Mundi</a> but has also issued albums on various smaller labels, including, especially in the 2010s and 2020s, <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Phi%22">Phi</a> and <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22PentaTone+Classics%22">PentaTone Classics</a>. The range of Romantic and contemporary music Herreweghe has conducted on recordings is perhaps greater than that of any other conductor associated with the early music movement and includes a complete cycle of Beethoven's symphonies, masses by <a href="spotify:artist:0BS8IrFmvK1tXenMULjwem">Palestrina</a>, Dvořák's Requiem mass, choral music by <a href="spotify:artist:2bM3j1JQWBkmzuoZKu4zj2">Bruckner</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:7ie36YytMoKtPiL7tUvmoE">Stravinsky</a>, and much more. On <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Harmonia+Mundi%22">Harmonia Mundi</a>, he and <a href="spotify:artist:17BdLN9q8RRQQqyklLwac1">Collegium Vocale</a> released an album of five-part madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo in 2021. By 2024, when Herreweghe and the <a href="spotify:artist:17BdLN9q8RRQQqyklLwac1">Collegium Vocale Gent</a> released the album Gesualdo: Silenzio mio - Il quarto libro di madrigali on <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Phi%22">Phi</a>, his recording catalog comprised at least 180 items from the CD era, plus many more LPs. ~ David Brensilver & James Manheim, Rovi