Philippe Herreweghe

Philippe Herreweghe, Collegium Vocale Gent – Bach: Missa in h-moll, BWV 232 (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:40:55 minutes | 946 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Phi

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”. Philippe Herreweghe’s longlasting interest in the works of the Cantor of Leipzig has turned him into a man whose views evolve as he delves deeper into his subject matter. The joy that he feels – combined with a very legitimate sense of pride – in having forged musical tools that have today reached maturity, has led him to come back on a Missa that has never ceased to intrigue him: the catholic Missa of the protestant composer Bach.

Last spring, theJesus-Christus Kirche in Berlin came alive with the splendid sounds of Bach’s score as preceding recordings of the Missa no longer met the radiant vision that the Flemish maestro had of it. Together with a handful of excellent soloists – included in the choir – and a Collegium vocally and instrumentally at its best, Philippe Herreweghe delivers a work that must be savoured like a sweet or a last supper where rigor and hedonism, inner depth and outer seduction tenderly offer themselves to the listener.
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Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe – Bach: Christus, der ist mein Leben – Sacred Cantatas (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:36 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Although Bach had dreamt of establishing a ‘well-regulated church music’ since his early days, it was only between 1723 and 1750 that he finally had the chance to do so, as Kantor and Director Musices in Leipzig. Here he invented the ‘modern’ cantata, combining chorales and traditional biblical texts with arias and recitatives on freely composed texts. The four cantatas recorded by Philippe Herreweghe offer a magisterial demonstration of the transition from cantatas initially judged ‘too theatrical’ to a perfectly achieved form – as in the cantata BWV 84, among the very last to be written.

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Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – J.S. Bach: Cantatas for Trinity (Remastered) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 53:18 minutes | 548 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

After his move to Leipzig in 1723, the years 1724 and 1725 were especially creative ones for the new Kantor of St Thomas’s. Bach had decided to write a complete cycle of chorale cantatas, thus producing a body of work that went far beyond the expectations of his employers. The target he had set himself now offered an unparalleled laboratory for musical experimentation. These three cantatas for the Sundays after Trinity, which begin the liturgical year, date from this period.

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Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – Bach: Advent Cantatas (Remastered) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:02:45 minutes | 663 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Waiting for the Lord…Surely one of the greatest gifts the Lutheran Church ever made to music was to have charged Bach with the duty of producing a cantata for every week of the year! He left us no fewer than three for the first Sunday in Advent alone, composed between 1714 (at Weimar) and 1724-31 (at Leipzig). They are inspired in very different ways by Luther’s original chorale: it is as if all of baroque Germany is contained between the sobriety of BWV 61 and the ambitious frescoes of BWV 36 and 62…

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Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – J.S. Bach: Secular Cantatas (Remastered) (2004/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:08 minutes | 992 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

“Sound, ye drums! Ring out, ye trumpets!” In his Leipzig years, Bach liked to remind people that he was not only Kantor of St Thomas’s, but also the city’s director of music. It was in this capacity that he wrote these sumptuous secular cantatas, in honour respectively of the university professor Kortte (BWV 207, 1726) and of Queen Maria Josepha (BWV 214, 1733). Allegorical figures such as Industry, Fortune, Honour and Gratitude take it in turns to sing of the learning and the merits of the recipients, borrowing material from one of the Brandenburg Concertos or ‘quoting’ some of the finest music from the Christmas Oratorio, not yet composed…

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Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – Bach: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80 (Remastered) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 52:18 minutes | 558 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Christ lag in Todesbanden, BWV 4, Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild, BWV 79, and Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80. Written at different moments in the composer’s life and based to a large extent on the works of Martin Luther, these cantatas reflect a marked taste for dramaturgy, vivid word painting and an invariably astonishing use of instruments and voices. Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent give us an accomplished version of these masterpieces, confirming, if further proof were needed, their stature as ardent champions of Bach.

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