Philippe Herreweghe

Philippe Herreweghe, a conductor, broke new ground by presenting Bach’s choral compositions using historical instruments, and he continues to hold a prominent position in this domain. He directs multiple interrelated groups that span repertoire from the late Renaissance through present-day works. Herreweghe established the Collegium Vocale Gent, an early-music ensemble that has proved one of the most enduring still active today. His extensive discography encompasses the release Gesualdo: Silenzio mio - Il quarto libro di madrigali.

Born in Gent, also known as Ghent, Belgium, on May 2, 1947, Herreweghe pursued simultaneous degrees in medicine and psychiatry at the University of Gent while studying piano under Marcel Gazelle at the affiliated conservatory. In 1969 he created the Collegium Vocale Gent. Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt soon recognized the young musician and invited him, together with his newly formed ensemble, to join a project that would record the complete set of Bach cantatas. Herreweghe later added harpsichord studies with Johan Huys and organ instruction from Gabriel Verschraegen at the same conservatory.

Driven by wide-ranging ambitions, he assembled a series of specialized ensembles, each tailored to particular stylistic periods and genres, and produced numerous recordings for the Harmonia Mundi label. His Ensemble Vocale Elysées concentrated on Bach and earlier composers. Founded jointly with Philippe Beaussant in 1977, the Ensemble La Chapelle Royale explored French Baroque music as well as vocal works from the Classical and Romantic eras; with this group Herreweghe issued an early digital recording of Dumont: Motets pour la chapelle du roy on Harmonia Mundi in 1989. He maintained a long association with the label. The Ensemble Vocale Européen, begun in 1989, focused on Renaissance polyphony, while the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées, launched in 1991 as a period-instrument orchestra, performed Classical and Romantic literature. Herreweghe allocates his schedule roughly equally among early music, Romantic repertoire, and contemporary pieces. Speaking with La Scena Musicale in November 1997, he likened his ensembles to “a poupée russe, you know, those Russian dolls that fit one inside the other,” noting that the core Baroque forces of Collegium Vocale expand into La Chapelle Royale for larger or French Baroque projects and further enlarge into the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées for Classical and Romantic scores.

Beyond his own organizations, Herreweghe has appeared as guest conductor with leading ensembles such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonic, and New York’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s. He became music director of the Festival of Saintes in 1982. During 1992 alone he issued twenty-three albums. Nominated as Musical Personality of the Year in 1990, he has earned additional honors including European Musician of the Year (1991), Cultural Ambassador of Flanders with his Collegium Chorale (1993), and the order of Officer of Arts and Letters (1994). In 1997 he assumed the music directorship of the Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra, later serving as its principal conductor from 2002; the ensemble is now the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, where he holds the title of honorary conductor. Between 2008 and 2013 he also acted as principal guest conductor of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic.

While continuing to record for Harmonia Mundi, he has released projects on smaller labels, notably Phi and PentaTone Classics during the 2010s and 2020s. The breadth of Romantic and contemporary repertoire he has documented on disc exceeds that of most conductors rooted in the early-music movement and includes a complete Beethoven symphony cycle, masses by Palestrina, Dvořák’s Requiem mass, and choral music by Bruckner and Stravinsky. On Harmonia Mundi, he and Collegium Vocale issued an album of five-part madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo in 2021. By 2024, when Herreweghe and the Collegium Vocale Gent brought out Gesualdo: Silenzio mio - Il quarto libro di madrigali on Phi, his recorded output from the CD era alone comprised at least 180 titles, in addition to numerous earlier LPs.