Philippe Herreweghe

Honorary conductor

Philippe Herreweghe is a permanent member of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra as honorary conductor. Born in Ghent, he combined his university studies with musical training at the conservatory, where he studied piano with Marcel Gazelle. He began conducting during the same period and founded Collegium Vocale Gent in 1970. Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt noticed his exceptional approach and invited him to collaborate on their recordings of the collected Bach cantatas.

Soon Herreweghe's lively, authentic and rhetorical approach to Baroque music was praised, and in 1977 he founded the ensemble La Chapelle Royale in Paris, performing the music of the French Golden Age. From 1982 to 2002, Philippe Herreweghe was artistic director of the Académies Musicales de Saintes. During that period, he created several ensembles, with which he gave an adequate and thorough reading of a repertoire ranging from the Renaissance to contemporary music. These included the Ensemble Vocal Européen, specialising in Renaissance polyphony, and the Orchestre des Champs Élysées, founded in 1991 with the aim of recreating the Romantic and Pre-Romantic repertoire on original instruments. Since 2009, Philippe Herreweghe has been actively working with Collegium Vocale Gent to develop a large symphonic choir on a European level. Since 2001, he has been artistic director of the Accademia delle Crete Senesi, the Tuscan summer festival known as Collegium Vocale Crete Senesi since 2017.

Always looking for musical challenges, Philippe Herreweghe has for some time been very active in the great symphonic repertoire from Beethoven to Stravinsky.  He has been conducting the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra since 1997. Moreover, he is a much sought-after guest conductor of orchestras such as the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra or the Tonhalle Orchester Zurich. In the coming seasons, engagements are planned with the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin and the Cleveland Orchestra.

With all these ensembles, Philippe Herreweghe built an extensive discography of more than 120 recordings with the Harmonia Mundi France, Virgin Classics and PentaTone labels. Highlights include Lassus' Lagrime di San Pietro, Bach's St Matthew Passion, Beethoven's and Schumann's integral symphonies, Mahler's song cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Bruckner's Symphony No.5, Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and Stravinsky's Symphonie de Psaumes. In 2010, a new recording project started with Philippe Herreweghe founding his own label φ (PHI) together with Outhere-Music. Meanwhile, more than 25 recordings are available featuring music from William Byrd to Igor Stravinsky. The most recent recordings include Carlo Gesualdo's Sixth Madrigal, Johannes Brahms' Fourth Symphony and Du treuer Gott with cantatas by J.S.Bach.