Philippe Maria François Herreweghe, Knight Herreweghe (born 2 May 1947) is a Belgian conductor and choirmaster.
Herreweghe founded La Chapelle Royale and Collegium Vocale Gent and is renowned as a conductor, with a repertoire ranging from Renaissance to early Romantic classical music. He specialises in Baroque music, with a particular focus on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Herreweghe was born in Ghent as the first of three children to Edward Raymond Frans (1919–2006) and Elza Maria Augusta Herreweghe (née van Herrewege; 1919–1976). He received his first piano lessons from his mother.
In his school years at the University of Ghent, Herreweghe combined studies in medical science and psychiatry with a musical education at the Ghent Conservatory, where Marcel Gazelle, Yehudi Menuhin's accompanist, was his piano teacher.
In 1970,[1] Herreweghe founded the Collegium Vocale Gent with a group of fellow students. Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt took notice of his musical approach and invited him and the Collegium Vocale Gent to join them in their recordings of the complete Bach cantatas.
Herreweghe's approach to Baroque music was soon drawing praise and in 1977 he founded another ensemble in Paris, La Chapelle Royale, to perform the music of the French Golden Age, Campra, Lully, Charpentier, Delalande, Dumont, Gille. From 1982 to 2002 he was artistic director of the Académies Musicales de Saintes.
During this period, Herreweghe started several other groups and ensembles with whom he made historically appropriate and well-thought-out interpretations of repertoire stretching from the Renaissance to contemporary music. They include the Ensemble Vocal Européen, specialised in Renaissance polyphony, and the Orchestre des Champs Élysées, founded in 1991 with the aim of playing Classical and Romantic repertoire on original instruments.
Since 2009, Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent have been actively working on the development of a large European-level symphonic choir, at the invitation of the prestigious Accademia Chigiana in Siena and since 2011 with the support of the European Union's Cultural Programme.
For some time Herreweghe has been active performing the great symphonic works, from Beethoven to Gustav Mahler. He has been principal conductor of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic since 1997.
As a guest conductor, Herreweghe has conducted a number of well-known orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Dutch Broadcasting Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic. He was artistic director of the Festival of Saintes and was permanent guest conductor of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic from 2008 to 2013.
Herreweghe is principally known as a conductor of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He is regarded by leading Bach scholars today as a founding father of the Baroque authentic practice, original-instrument movement and one of record label Harmonia Mundi's most prolific recording artists, with over 60 albums to his name.
He is married to Ageet Zweistra.
Over the years, Herreweghe has built up an extensive discography of more than 100 recordings with these ensembles, on such labels as Harmonia Mundi, Virgin Classics and Pentatone. Highlights include the Lagrime di San Pietro of Lassus, Bach's St Matthew Passion, the complete symphonies of Beethoven and Schumann, Mahler's song cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Berlioz's L'enfance du Christ & Les nuits d'été, Bruckner's Symphony No. 5, Fauré's Requiem (1988 & 1901), Pierrot lunaire by Schönberg, Weill's Violin Concerto, Berliner Requiem; Cantate vom Tod im Wald and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. In 2010 he founded together with Outhere Music his own label, φ (PHI). Since then these recordings have been published:
