Philippe Herreweghe

Philippe Herreweghe was born in Ghent, and combined university studies in medicine and psychiatry with a musical training at the conservatory, where he studied piano with Marcel Gazelle. In the same period he also started conducting and in 1970 he founded the ensemble Collegium Vocale Ghent. Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt soon noticed his exceptional approach and invited him to work on their project recording the complete Bach cantatas.

Herreweghe’s lively, authentic and rhetorical way with the music of the baroque quickly received critical acclaim. In 1977 he formed the ensemble La Chapelle Royale in Paris, with which he performed music of the French Golden Age. Since then he has founded other ensembles, which he uses separately or in combination to arrive at an appropriate and comprehensive reading of a repertoire spanning from the Renaissance to contemporary music. These include the Ensemble Vocal Européen, specialised in Renaissance polyphony, and the Orchestre des Champs Elysées, founded in 1991 with the aim of re-creating the brilliance of the Romantic and pre-Romantic repertoire on original instruments.

Over the years, Philippe Herreweghe has built up an extensive and enormously varied discography with all these ensembles, recording music from Josquin Desprez to Arnold Schönberg. Recent recordings for Harmonia Mundi include Gustav Mahler’s ‘Des Knaben Wunderhorn’, Anton Bruckner’s 4th (‘Romantic’) Symphony, Heinrich Schütz’s Opus Ultimum ‘Der Schwanengesang’ , a new volume of Bach cantatas and Ludwig van Beethoven’s 1st and 3rd Symphonies with Pentatone.

Continually seeking musical challenges, Philippe Herreweghe has been working very actively with the larger symphonic repertoire from Robert Schumann to Gustav Mahler in the last few years.   He is also a frequent guest conductor for orchestras such as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. He has been engaged as music director of deFilharmonie (Royal Flemish Philharmonic) since 1997. Starting in the 2008-2009 season, Philippe Herreweghe will be the permanent guest conductor of the Netherlands’ Radio Chamber Philharmonic.

Philippe Herreweghe has been awarded many prizes and titles from various parts of Europe for his consistent artistic vision and tireless engagement with music. In 1990 the European music press named him ‘Musical Personality of the Year’. In 1993 Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Ghent were named ‘Cultural Ambassador of Flanders’. The next year he was admitted to the Belgian order of Officier des Arts et Lettres, and in 1997 he was named Doctor honoris causa by Leuven University. In 2003 he was awarded the title of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government.

© collegium vocale gent/jens van durme (April 2008)