Philippe Herreweghe

Philippe Herreweghe was born in Ghent and studied at both the university and music conservatory there. During this period he started conducting and founded Collegium Vocale Gent in 1970. Philippe Herreweghe’s energetic, authentic and rhetorical approach to baroque music was soon drawing praise. In 1977 he founded the ensemble La Chapelle Royale in Paris, with whom he performed music of the French Golden Age. He founded several 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 pre-Romantic and Romantic repertoire on original instruments. 

Highlights of the 2024/25 season for Philippe Herreweghe include guest conducting engagements with the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. Together with the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, he will present various Beethoven projects in Europe's leading concert halls. He also performs Bach's St John Passion and madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi, Salomone Rossi and Luca Marenzio, among others, with the Collegium Vocale Gent. At the Mozartwoche Salzburg he presents selected Bach cantatas. 

Herreweghe has received numerous awards for his consistent artistic imagination and commitment. In 1990 the European music press named him “Musical Personality of the Year”. Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent were appointed Cultural Ambassadors of Flanders in 1993. A year later he was awarded the Belgian order of Officier des Arts et Lettres, and in 1997 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of Leuven. In 2003 he received the French title Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. In 2010 the city of Leipzig awarded him its Bach-Medaille for his great service as a performer of Bach. In 2017 Philippe Herreweghe received an honorary doctorate at Ghent University. In 2021, Philippe Herreweghe returned to the Musikfest Bremen with concerts together with Orchestre des Champs-Élysées and Collegium Vocale Gent. Having already made his Musikfest Bremen debut in 1996 with the choir and orchestra of the Collegium Vocale Gent, he was honoured in 2021 with the Bremer Musikfest-Preis for his outstanding artistic work. In addition, Herreweghe was awarded the Ultima prize for general cultural merit by the Flemish government in the same year.