While Igor Stravinsky is known for his exciting and ground-breaking words The Rite of Spring and The Firebird, it would be reductive to view him solely through the prism of those works. Threi is his longest, most ambitious and complex score and probably one of the peaks of his career. A work like the Requiem Canticles goes even further in this direction: the composer's last masterpiece, summarizing in itself the evolution of an entire lifetime. In this album, Philippe Herreweghe reveals with conviction his love for the composer's music and under his sure, inspired direction, the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic reveal their pure poetry.

For the third time on the Phi label, Philippe Herreweghe gives us the opportunity to (re)discover three cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach – Nimm von uns, Herr, du treuer Gott, BWV 101, Ihr werdet weinen und heulen, BWV 103 and Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit, BWV 115. After two albums of cantatas written during the composer’s first year in Leipzig (LPH006 and LPH012), the Belgian conductor and his Collegium Vocale Gent, orchestra and choir, will be performing three cantatas he composed during his second year as Kantor at St Thomas’s. The choir and vocal soloists are once again challenged to produce performances of subtlety and refined virtuosity, and the instrumentarium is as rich and colourful as those heard previously in this series. This album, a genuine delight for aficionados and novices alike, precedes a further disc of cantatas which will be released in spring 2018.

A personality has who provoked considerable controversy over the centuries, Carlo Gesualdo (1566- 1613), aristocrat, musician and murderer of his first wife, is no less a composer whose music is marked by subtlety and refinement. His innovative Sixth Book of Madrigals, written two years before his death, exploits all harmonic, chromatic, and textural possibilities to meet the texts’ expressive requirements and proves to be a veritable masterpiece of the genre. After a first release devoted to the Italian composer’s sacred works, the Tenebrae Responsoria, Philippe Herreweghe and his Collegium Vocale Gent invite us to (re)discover his secular music for the 450th anniversary of his birth. In masterful fashion, they propose a delicate, expressive reading of this complex music, doing justice to the modernity of the musical language of the Prince of Venosa. The acoustics of the church in the little Tuscan village of Asciano, where the programme was recorded in 2015, provides an ideal sound setting for this music.

For its second vinyl release, PHI has chosen to reissue one of Philippe Herreweghe’s most masterly interpretations: Antonín Dvorak’s ineffable Stabat Mater, for which the conductor and his ensembles, the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, were praised by public and press alike – Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, 4F Telerama, 4 stars in Classica, Le Choix de France Musique, and 10 in Luister and Klara, to name but a few of the distinctions it earned. "With the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, [Philippe Herreweghe and his Collegium Vocale Gent] rid this rarely recorded work of all Romantic excess. The result is a spiritual journey... highlighting the universal greatness of this major work of sacred music.” (CHOIX de France Musique) "All of Herreweghe’s performers clearly love this ravishing music, relishing every detail of this beautifully nuanced score... This new release must be the top choice." (Gramophone Editor’s Choice, Recording of the Month) "The serenity Dvorak succeeded in reclaiming is particularly present in the movements reserved for the choir, and especially so here with the interventions of Collegium Vocale Gent, possibly the only European ensemble . . . that currently offers such purity of timbre, perfection of intonation and accuracy of expression." (4F Teleram)

The Collegium Vocale Gent, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic and Philippe Herreweghe join forces once again for a monument of the sacred choral repertoire: Antonín Dvorák’s Requiem, Op. 89. This work, dating from 1890, is one of those that marked a new phase in the composer’s musical creation, in which he recognized himself ‘as much a poet as well as a musician’. In addition, this reveals the veritable nature of a composer without constraint, probably being neither a commission nor an occasional work.

William Byrd’s motet Infelix ego is featured in the album offering several of the great English composer's sacred motets, performed by the outstanding Collegium Vocale Gent, directed by Philippe Herreweghe. The text of Infelix ego by the Dominica Girolamo Savonarola, is a contemplation of guilt and anger leading eventually to the gift of deliverance upon acceptance of Christ. Byrd's setting musically reflects the powerful emotions.

The Collegium Vocale Gent also presents Byrd's Mass for 5 Voices and additional motets, as well as Alfonso Ferrabosco’s Peccantem me quotidie a5 and Philippus de Monte’s Miserere mei a5. - Phi

Mozart's last three symphonies carry within them the aesthetic ideal of their composer. Orchestre des Champs, using period instruments, reveals the richness and visionary complexity that prepared the way for the Beethovenian revolution. Led by Philippe Herreweghe, the orchestra explores the sonority and motor rhythms of Mozart's symphonic writing at the height of his powers.

The Collegium Vocale Gent and Orchestre des Champs-Elysées interpret Beethoven's Missa Solemnis for PHI. This major work of the sacred repertoire, high on the list alongside Bach's Mass in B minor and the Mozart Requiem, is Beethoven's longest work and assuredly the one that demanded the most work. The composer even considered the Mass his finest work. Philippe Herreweghe shares this opinion and judges the Missa Solemnis to be one of the apogees in the history of classical music. With four superb soloists, a refined chorus and orchestra, Philippe Herreweghe invites us to a thoroughly transcendental experience.

The second project of Collegium Vocale Gent and Philippe Herreweghe for the Phi label to focus on Renaissance music is devoted to one of the most remarkable of all composers: Carlo Gesualdo. Both his life, characterised by extravagant and excessive behaviour, and his compositions left their mark on the history of music. Although best known for his secular music, he also wrote an almost equivalent number of sacred works that demonstrate his fervent faith. The Tenebrae Responsories comprise a set of pieces for Holy Week, in all twenty-seven motets for six voices, a psalm, and a hymn, published under his own supervision in 1611. As in his madrigals, the music is underpinned by many unexpected chromatic variations that create expressive images evoking tears, the earthquake, the despair of Christ on the cross, etc. The acoustics of the church of the village of Asciano in Tuscany, where the programme was recorded in 2011, create the perfect soundscape for this music.

R E V I E W S:

Philippe Herreweghe and his Collegium Vocale Gent are masters of Renaissance polyphony, having produced go-to titles of this repertoire in their two-decade discography for Harmonia Mundi. Now recording for their own imprint, Herreweghe and company present a double-disc set of Carlo Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsories. Infamously, the Italian nobleman had his wife killed after catching her in flagrante delicto with another; his works thereafter have a penitential dissonance that gives the music a modernist feel. If not as chromatic as his late madrigals, Gesualdo’s works for Tenebrae are more harmonically and rhythmically daring than those of, say, Lassus or Victoria. As atmospheric as a candle-lit ceremony, Herreweghe’s account of these richly textured works is beautifully sung and perfectly recorded.

-- Bradley Bambager, Listen Magazine

Synchronicity strikes again. Here, on the heels of Marco Longhini’s beautifully boxed set of Gesualdo’s secular madrigals (see my review above), is a release of the composer’s sacred music. As annotator Glenn Watkins puts it in the booklet, Gesualdo’s sacred music fell completely into oblivion. Watkins surmises that part of this may have been due to the fact that very few copies have survived, indicating (to him) that the print run may have been very small to begin with. Yet there may also be the barrier to non-religious listeners who simply do not respond to this type of music. As always, it depends on the quality of the music and the quality of the performances.

Watkins’s liner notes do not indicate whether or not the published copies of these scores call for the number of voices used here, which range between 13 and 19. (Herreweghe’s choir includes six female singers.) Nevertheless, the group is splendid. It has that rare combination of good vocal blend, transparency of texture and excellent diction that made Longhini’s madrigal performances equally exceptional. Moreover, as Longhini’s high male voices blended perfectly with the lower ones, so do Herreweghe’s female voices blend perfectly with the male, including four countertenors (two designated as “altus” and two as “quintus”) with equally exceptional voices.

What Watkins does indicate, however, is that the religious music is not as harmonically daring as the last two books of madrigals: “the moderation of their most extreme harmonic language in the sacred works cannot fail to be noted. Yet while the insistent contrast between fast (diatonic) and slow (chromatic) music found in the madrigals is less obvious here, the sacred texts offer abundant images for an inflected musical response.” In addition, as the performances unfolded, I heard quite a bit here that was considerably more advanced than any other liturgical music of its time; and, more to the point, not only the music but its performance here was considerably more emotional and powerful than the Gregorian chant and/or Palestrina music used at that time. Again, to quote Watkins, “Gesualdo’s introduction of such a powerful musical language into the ritual of Holy Week has been debated as a potentially disturbing contravention of the rules of post-Tridentine liturgical practice….We need only consider Gesualdo’s setting of Tristis est anima mea from the Maundy Thursday cycle to note the difference….The flight at the beginning is flurried and quickly cut off by a rhythmic snap; the offering of his soul and body that follows is embraced by one of the most affective and passionately chromatic passages in the entire cycle….In the Holy Saturday cycle, Aestimatus sum … is drama of a high order and of a kind rarely attained in the world of sacred music before or after.”

Watkins’s dry but accurate description of this music says as much as I could, thus I will allow his words to stand for mine here. From whatever viewpoint you approach this remarkable set of discs, however, it is a gem to be cherished.

FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Philippe Herreweghe records his third disc devoted to a controversial figure in the world of music and art in general: Carlo Gesualdo, who had his wife murdered and is suspected of having his son smothered. This time Collegium Vocale Gent performs his fifth book of madrigals (1611), published two years before his death. A collection that even today contributes to the eternal debate: to what extent does art become impregnated with reality, and how can it be appreciated when it emanates from a mind living so close to horror? Here the bold dissonances and sometimes tortured expressiveness that can be perceived in his harmonic language offer food for thought. Can we speak of redemption through art for a murderous composer in the twilight of his life?

Bach’s St John Passion, with its famous opening chorus traversed by shadows and light, is a powerful musical and spiritual reflection. Dramatic, grandiose, complex, resolutely theatrical: there has been no lack of superlatives to describe this supreme masterpiece of western music. Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent present an accomplished reading that reflects their knowledge of the composer, based on extensive research and deepened by countless concerts. Soloists Krešimir Stražanac and Maximilian Schmitt demonstrate the breadth of their talents in the roles of Jesus and the Evangelist.

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REVIEW:

Contributing to the discerning unity of vision and character of this performance is how the instruments sit embedded at the heart of the vocal sound…This is indeed one of the most thoughtful, affecting and powerful St John Passions in recent years. It reveals the mature mastery of Herreweghe at his most perspicacious and consistent, with Collegium Vocale Gent paving the way with gold.

– Gramophone

Although the symphony was the most prestigious instrumental genre of his time, Brahms avoided it for many years. In 1872, when he was already more than forty years old and was widely acknowledged for his chamber and choral music, he observed: ‘I will never write a symphony! You can’t imagine what it’s like to hear a giant treading behind you.’ The giant was of course Beethoven, at once an inspiration and a source of intimidation for composers of Brahms’s generation. Fortunately, however, he went back on his promise a few years later with his First Symphony, followed by three more composed between 1876 and 1885. The two works presented here are the Second Symphony, sometimes sombre, sometimes radiant, and the Fourth, a genuine masterpiece of the genre. This disc, recorded on period instruments under the masterly direction of Philippe Herreweghe, is released to coincide with a double anniversary: as a prelude to the Flemish conductor’s seventieth birthday, it also celebrates the twenty-fifth year of existence of one of his favourite ensembles: the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées.

Maud Gratton is an artist constantly seeking perfection. A graduate of the Paris Conservatoire, she trained with great masters such as Pierre Hantai and Louis Robilliard. On this new release, Gratton has chosen an ideal program for demonstrating her art, proposing an intelligent panorama of organ works by J.S. Bach.

In a series of interviews with Camille De Rijck, Philippe Herreweghe sums up his musical trajectory by offering the reader his reflections, intermingling musical and personal considerations. A selection of archive illustrations to delight the eyes and an updated biography complete the contents of the book, which is published in four languages. A five-disc compilation of extracts chosen and discussed by the conductor himself provides a musical counterpoint to the text. The selection enables you to explore a whole life through the finest works of such composers as Lassus, Schein, Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, Dvorak and Stravinsky. Thanks to the long-standing close collaboration between Philippe Herreweghe and his favorite ensembles - Collegium Vocale Gent, the Orchestre des Champs-Elysees and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic - this anthology of his most remarkable interpretations is also an opportunity to experience at leisure the extraordinary palette of colors and timbres that he invariably succeeds in obtaining from them, and transports us to the very heart of the Flemish conductor's inner world.

The pairing of the two works on this album is unique in that one comes from the dawn, the other from the dusk of Ludwig van Beethoven’s career. Indeed, whereas the composer wrote the Quintet for winds and piano, Op. 16 when he was only 26- the talented young man also excelled as a successful pianist- he did not finish his String Quartet Op. 130 until a year before his death. The Edding quartet proposes here the original version of the work, with the Grosse Fuge, op.130, as final. The direct comparison of these two works on the same disc intelligently sheds light on the fantastic distance the composer covered between these two points in time. Two years after their successful Schubert album, which was warmly received by the press and public, the Edding Quartet and Northernlight felicitously join together once again on the same album to give new readings of these masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire. Having become major interpreters of the Classical and Romantic repertoires, the two ensembles offer expert performances, refined and precise, of two of the German composer’s finest scores.

Impressed by the Handel works that he heard in London, Haydn felt the need to compose oratorios. First came Die Schöpfung (‘The Creation’), which met with resounding success; then Baron Gottfried van Swieten proposed to Haydn an arrangement of James Thomson’s poem ‘The Seasons’. Initially, Haydn was little attracted by the text, which deviates from the classic oratorio based on a religious text, but subsequently let himself be convinced. The result, for three soloists, chorus and orchestra, is a vast pictorial fresco of Nature that describes landscapes and the feelings that they arouse. For the first time, Philippe Herreweghe gives us his own vision of an oratorium by Haydn. This recording is also the first in a Haydn cycle with Philippe Herreweghe for Phi.

MAHLER Symphony No. 4 • Phillipe Herreweghe, cond; Rosemary Joshua (sop); Champs-Elysée O • OUTHERE LPH 001 (53:28)


Mahler’s symphonies are a relative newcomer to the period-instrument movement: Roger Norrington’s Hänssler disc is the only alternative to this new one. The main divergence between these historically informed versions and all of the others is the issue of vibrato, particularly in the strings: Both of the orchestras employ little if any; Herreweghe’s string players also use gut strings.


Some listeners may feel, as I do, that there is an astringent tone in the string sound (though that is a positive boon in the second movement’s scordatura passages); this is partially offset by the clarity and directness of the sound as a whole, both instrumentally and in the audio production (provided by the masterly Andreas Neubronner). Detail is exemplary and natural, surpassing most of the competition, SACDs included.


Herreweghe, while happy to enumerate the differences in sound provided by his period orchestra, rightly notes that “we are only too aware of one blatant fact: the essential is elsewhere.” Quite so. In matters of tempo, I have no argument. The first three movements are crisply articulated, with care taken to observe the sometimes deceptively complex tempo changes. The third movement is particularly successful, where the natural balance between winds and strings that Herreweghe mentions in his program note is especially effective. There is enough warmth in the string tone to establish the peaceful opening feeling, while there is ample power in the winds to negotiate the minor-mode darkness and the arrival at heaven’s gates.


The printed timing of the last movement—6: 41—sent up a red flag. Mahler’s own piano roll of the movement was timed at 7:19, and Yvonne Kenny’s recording (once available on Pickwick) is breathless in the extreme; most recordings time out between eight and 10 minutes (Norrington’s is 8:37). Luckily, this proved to be a typo, and Herreweghe accompanies the fresh-sounding and exquisitely characterful Rosemary Joshua at a sensible 8:41 (the total time, as listed in the headnote, is correct).


All together, this is an excellent recording. I prefer it to the Norrington, mostly due to the latter’s characteristically over-hasty tempos and to the less ingratiating sound of his orchestra. Herreweghe’s own attention to Mahler’s sound world (his Wunderhorn disc was reviewed in Fanfare 30:3) has once again paid a handsome dividend.


FANFARE: Christopher Abbot

Collegium Vocale Gent and it's founder Philippe Herreweghe continue their recordings of the works of Carlo Gesualdo with 'Silenzio Mio', which contains the Fourth Book of Madrigals, published in 1596. Regarded as one of the most eccentric composers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but also one of the most creative, he experiments here with new melodic and harmonic effects that enthralled listeners of the time. These innovations are applied to poems by Alessandro Guarini and several anonymous writers, all of which focus on the expression of personal feelings, particularly a 'pathos' new on the literary scene. A veritable historical testimony to the artistic turning point that occurred at the court of Ferrara in the early seventeenth century, this fourth book takes it's place in the long-term recording project of Collegium Vocale, hailed by critics for it's 'homogeneity, contrapuntal transparency and luminosity, strikingly evident even in the most tormented pieces' (Diapason).

Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent have made a lasting impression on the Bach discography with their many recordings devoted to the Kantor. They have also explored other sacred repertoires by Beethoven, Haydn, Dvorák and Bruckner, to which they have brought all their excellence and sensitivity. Here they are together for the first time in a boxed set of 11 CDs.

The Antwerp Symphony Orchestra and Philippe Herreweghe have enjoyed a close relationship since 1997, and the Ghent conductor regularly conducts and records with the Flanders orchestra. After the Second and Fourth Symphonies (LPH032), they are continuing their exploration of Schumann's symphonies: "The symphony has given me many hours of joy. I often give thanks to the beneficent spirit that enabled me to complete such an important work so easily and in such a short time" says the tormented composer. He wrote his first symphony, "Spring", in just four days and orchestrated it in three weeks. The third, known as the "Rhenish", was inspired by a day Schumann spent with his wife Clara in the Rhineland.

Beethoven wrote that he composed the oratorio Christus am Ölberge (Christ on the Mount of Olives) in just "a fortnight, amid all sorts of tumult and other unpleasant and alarming events in my life." It marked the first time since the two ‘imperial cantatas’ of 1790, the Cantata on the Death of the Emperor Joseph II WoO 87 and the Cantata on the Accession of Leopold II WoO 88, that he had embarked on a multi-movement vocal work. Christus am Ölberge was also Beethoven’s first composition on a religious subject and was destined to remain his only oratorio.

Founded by Philippe Herreweghe at a time when the Baroque revival was still a matter for specialists, Collegium Vocale Gent has been at the heart of the rediscovery of Bach's sacred music. This ten-album set brings together some of his finest sacred vocal works, from a selection of Leipzig cantatas (Gramophone Editor’s Choice, Choc de Classica etc.) to the St John Passion (Gramophone Editor’s Choice, Trophée Radio Classique) by way of the Mass in B minor. Collegium Vocale Gent was one of the first ensembles to use new ideas about baroque performance practice in vocal music. Their authentic, text-oriented and rhetorical approach gave the ensemble the transparent sound with which it would acquire world fame. In recent years, Collegium Vocale Gent has grown organically into an extremely flexible ensemble whose wide repertoire encompasses the full range of different stylistic periods from Renaissance up to contemporary music. Besides its own baroque orchestra, Collegium Vocale Gent works together with several historically informed ensembles, including the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, Freiburger Barockorchester and Akademie fü r Alte Musik Berlin. It also works with prominent symphony orchestras such as the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouworkest. Since 2017 the ensemble runs its own summer festival, Collegium Vocale Crete Senesi, in Tuscany, Italy. Collegium Vocale Gent enjoys the financial support of the Flemish Community and the city of Ghent.

Monteverdi’s Fourth Book of Madrigals, published in 1603 after an eleven-year gestation, bears witness to the metamorphosis of the madrigal and the rapid evolution of music at the turn of the two centuries. It is also a model of the genre and may be regarded as one of the most innovative and emblematic of its composer’s style. This bold, complex book is the culmination of the application of the precepts of the seconda pratica on the cusp of the seventeenth century. The dedication tells us that some of its madrigals had been intended for presentation to Duke Alfonso II d’Este (who died in 1597), thus revealing the key influence on this collection of the court of Ferrara, then one of the most sophisticated in Europe and a crucible of musical innovation. Following the release of the Vespers, Philippe Herreweghe, a great lover of Italy and its repertory, accompanied as ever by Collegium Vocale Gent, signs his second recording devoted to Monteverdi on the Phi label with this Fourth Book of Madrigals.