Collegium Vocale Gent

Philippe Herreweghe accomplished first great musical feat in his early twenties. While still a student he founded the ensemble that has been inseparably linked with his own name for over 50 years since: the Collegium Vocale Gent: “Back then my greatest concern was to regain awareness of the correct phrasing, ornamentation and performance technique. Only after ten years of teaching could I treat these stylistic elements as craftsmen’s tools that I could use to help me create the Bach that satisfies me personally.” With his text-centred and rhetorical approach, Herreweghe is regarded as an outstanding interpreter of Bach and his readings of the composer’s works, using historic instruments and a streamlined choral cast have been received enthusiastically all around with world. At Musikfest Berlin the choir and orchestra of Collegium Vocale Gent and Philippe Herreweghe will present a guest performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s last great artistic work: the Mass in B minor. Here Bach created an interdenominational work, as a Protestant cantor setting the Latin text of the Catholic liturgical mass. With its wide range of musical forms and styles, contrapuntal density and concert-like ease, contemplative passages and dramatic emotional vocabulary, he once again brought together the entire wealth of his compositional powers. No wonder that the 99-page manuscript of this remarkable work, stored in the Berlin State Library, is included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World register.