A passion for music

Maestro Philippe Herreweghe goes for Baroque and much, much more  

Almost as far back as he can remember, the internationally celebrated Belgian conductor Philippe Herreweghe has been fired by a passion for music. In 1955, at the age of eight, he began studying at the conservatory in his native Ghent. At the same time, he joined the choir of the Jesuit school he was attending. Four years later, he was conducting it.

“I was then musically divided in two,” he says. “On the one hand, I studied piano at the conservatory, where I played the usual music -- Haydn, Brahms, Beethoven and the like. And at the Jesuit school, I was involved with so-called ancient music without knowing it. Only later, in the 1960s and ’70s, was early music acknowledged as a school unto itself.”

Herreweghe’s father was a doctor and his mother a music-loving amateur pianist. He shared both of their interests, but after completing his studies in medicine – which he later briefly practiced – and three years’ training in psychiatry, he opted to devote himself to music, his overriding passion. ‘Passion’ is a word he pronounced repeatedly and with intensity during a recent chat we had at Bozar, where he is about lead the first of six concerts in his 20th year as artist in residence. At Herreweghe’s request, our conversation focused on music and did not touch on his private life except insofar as it, too, revolves around music. 

In 1969, while in his first year of medical studies, Herreweghe founded the Collegium Vocale Gent– an instrumental and vocal group composed of a dozen or so amateurs, as he calls them, quickly adding, “but very fine ones”. Soon he would form several larger ensembles, each of which served as a performance vehicle for specific genres and periods of composition. Thus, Herreweghe’s Ensemble Vocale Elysées concentrated on the work of Bach and his predecessors. The Ensemble La Chapelle Royale (founded with Philippe Beaussant in 1977) focused on French Baroque music and on vocal music from the Classical and Romantic eras.

Founded in 1989, his Ensemble Vocale Européen was largely devoted to Renaissance polyphony, while the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées (founded 1991), an original instrument ensemble, performed music from the Classical and Romantic periods.

Today, still patently indefatigable, Herreweghe regularly conducts some 120 concerts every year with four different ensembles: the Collegium Vocale, the Parisian Orchestre des Champs-Elysées, the Antwerp-based Royal Flemish Philharmonic and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic. Most of the appearances are in Europe but some are in the US, Asia and Australia. He coolly calculates that he spends some 260 nights a year in a hotel, although he has a house in Ixelles and a vacation home in Italy, near Sienna. What might strike others as an exhausting musical juggling act is merely routine to him.

Why so many ensemble variations? Herreweghe explains: “My core Baroque group for Bach and German repertoire is the Collegium Vocale. For bigger works and French Baroque we enlarge it to make La Chapelle Royale. For even bigger classical and Romantic works we add about twenty percent more players to form the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées. This way I can conduct a large repertoire while maintaining the organic integrity of the groups as much as possible.” 
 

Whenever possible, Herreweghe insists on reproducing the composer’s intended sound by using period instruments or their replicas. “You wouldn’t put wine, even very fine wine, in your gas tank, would you?” he asks with a smile. “It’s the same, perhaps even more so, in music.” As a result, more than any other Belgian musician, Herreweghe has played a crucial, determining role in restoring the freshness and purity of pre-18th century music, particularly in choral works, where he remains first and foremost the choir-master.

Like many musicians in the immediate post-War era, Herreweghe initially concentrated on previously neglected or underestimated music of the Baroque era (roughly 1600-1750), particularly Johann Sebastian Bach’s vast choral literature. But over the past 15 years he has moved boldly into, first, 19th-century Romantic music – Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, the ‘usual’ standards – and then late 20th- and  early 21st-century modernist music beginning with Mahler and extending to the present day. In this perspective, he notes drily, “Stravinsky is now old music”. 

Herreweghe recently founded his own recording label, PHI, after working for 30 years with Harmonia Mundi. This, he says, gives him “freedom in what I want to record and when I want to record it. Also, I can record others whose work I admire but who are not yet fully appreciated.”

Up close, Herreweghe appears a decade younger than his 64 years, and his recollections are as precise as his conducting gestures. In what is still his ripe middle age, Herreweghe sees his musical future as wide open. The passion is clearly enduring. “It’s fantastic to love what you do!” he exclaims. 

Best recordings

Among Herreweghe’s more than 100 recordings, two deserve special mention, one relatively old and one new. The Collegium Vocale’s 1985 performance of J.S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion (Harmonia Mundi, 3 CDs,  out of stock) remains one of the outstanding interpretations of what some call the Baroque master’s Ninth Symphony. It is never solemn or tedious and the recitatives are as absorbing as the more familiar arias. Ian Bostridge’s youthfully lyric Evangelist and Josef Selig’s meditative Christ especially stand out in a definitive rendition.

Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, Herreweghe’s inaugural (2010) effort on his own label PHI (distributed by Outhere) marks another first: a period-instrument performance of this much-recorded masterwork. Under his baton, the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées delivers a first-rate performance. Herreweghe manages to deliver the impulsive melody and sumptuousness of the music with plenty of feeling but little vibrato. In the fourth movement solo, soprano Rosemary Joshua makes up for it with more exquisite, yearning vibrato than any of the players.

Brand new

Released on November 10 on Herreweghe’s PHI label, a recording of vocal works by Brahms performed by the combined forces of the Collegium Vocale, members of the Accademia Chigiana of Sienna and the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées. All conducted, of course, by Philippe Herreweghe. 

Herreweghe at Bozar

November 15  Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, performed by the Collegium Vocale and the Orchestre des Champs Elysées, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The concert is preceded by a documentary film on the Collegium Vocale and a discussion with Herreweghe.

December 22  Christmas concert, Haydn, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, performed by the Royal Flemish Philharmonic.

December 23  Bach Cantatas, by the Collegium Vocale.

 
February 28  Weill, Eisler, Distler,  performed by the Collegium Vocale.

 
May 11  Mozart, Stravinsky, performed by the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, pianist Alain Planès.

June 5  Carlo Gesualdo, performed by the Collegium Vocale at the Eglise des Minimes
www.bozar.be
 

Collegium Vocale performances

JS Bach’s B-Minor Mass, Concertgebouw, Bruges, January 20, www.concertgebouw.be

JS Bach Cantatas, Concertgebouw, Bruges, January 22, www.concertgebouw.be

JS Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion begins international tour at the Muziekcentrum De Bijloke, Ghent,  March 29 www.debijloke.be