Collegium Vocale Gent

Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – J.S. Bach: Himmelfahrts-Oratorium, BWV 11 (Remastered) (1993/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:00 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen (Laud to God in all his kingdoms), BWV 11,[a] known as the Ascension Oratorio (Himmelfahrtsoratorium), is an oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach, marked by him as Oratorium In Festo Ascensionis Xsti (Oratorio for the feast of the Ascension of Christ), composed for the service for Ascension and probably first performed on 15 May 1738.

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Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – Bach: Mit Fried und Freud (Remastered) (1998/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:26 minutes | 1016 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

The theme of death and dying was one of the favourite themes ofBach and his contemporaries in their cantatas – that “musical theology”which was held in such high esteem in deeply Lutheran Northern Germany.Composed between 1723 and 1725, the three cantatas on this record treatthe subject from different angles: the expectation of a “marvellousdawn” (BWV 8), the final departure in peace and joy (BWV 125), and thevanity of earthly existence (BWV 138). There is “no consolation onearth”, but only in heaven – what other composer, what other artistsucceeded in expressing this consolation with such depth, or with suchobviousness as Bach?

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Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben – Bach: Cantatas BWV 6-99-147 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:22 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Phi

After a St John Passion that won widespread critical acclaim (Gramophone Editor’s Choice, BBC Music Magazine ‘s Choice, Trophée de Radio Classique ), Philippe Herreweghe and his ensemble Collegium Vocale Gent continue the journey to the heart of Bach’s oeuvre that has made them world-famous with a programme of cantatas. The three recorded here were composed between 1723 and 1725 for St Thomas’s Church in Leipzig, where the composer held the post of Kantor from 1723 until his death in 1750.

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Philippe Herreweghe, Collegium Vocale Gent – Ludwig van Beethoven : Missa solemnis (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:15:19 minutes | 729 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Phi

The Collegium Vocale Gent and Orchestre des Champs-Elysées interpret Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis for PHI. This major work of the sacred repertoire, high on the list alongside Bach’s Mass in B minor and the Mozart Requiem, is Beethoven’s longest work and assuredly the one that demanded the most work. The composer even considered the Mass his finest work. Philippe Herreweghe shares this opinion and judges the Missa Solemnis to be one of the apogees in the history of classical music. With four superb soloists, a refined chorus and orchestra, Philippe Herreweghe invites us to a thoroughly transcendental experience.

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Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe – J.S. Bach – Ich elender Mensch: Leipzig Cantatas (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:28 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Phi

For the second time on the Phi label, Philippe Herreweghe presents four Bach cantatas written during the first year the composer spent in Leipzig. In relation to the repertoire composed in Weimar, the instrumentarium is enlarged to adapt to the size of the churches of Saint Thomas and Saint Nicholas. But, above all, the instrumental virtuosity is much greater, as are the vocal demands confronting the choirs and solo singers, trained at the time by Bach himself. The Collegium Vocale Gent, under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe and in the company of top-notch soloists (Dorothee Mields, Damien Guillon, Thomas Hobbs and Peter Kooij), show us in dazzling fashion to what point the composer endeavoured to create veritable musical sermons going far beyond a simple musical setting of the text. By way of a bonus, the album contains a magical little piece, Komm, Jesu, komm by Johann Schelle, one of Bach’s predecessors in Leipzig.
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Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe – Johann Sebastian Bach – Ach süßer Trost ! (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:07:21 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Phi

The four cantatas selected by Philippe Herreweghe for this recording date from the first year of Bach s activity in Leipzig. Written at a tight pace between late July and early September 1723, they underscore the composer s obvious effort to establish original musical proposals. He continually showed musicians and listeners that he was not serving them routine cantor s music, but was writing sacred music as a true Kapellmeister. In this first volume of Bach cantatas for the PHI label, the Collegium Vocale Gent interprets some of the cantatas for the first time.
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Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – Gesualdo: O dolce mio tesoro. Madrigali a cinque voci, Libro sesto (1611) (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:33 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Phi

A personality has who provoked considerable controversy over the centuries, Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613), aristocrat, musician and murderer of his first wife, is no less a composer whose music is marked by subtlety and refinement. His innovative Sixth Book of Madrigals, written two years before his death, exploits all harmonic, chromatic, and textural possibilities to meet the texts’ expressive requirements and proves to be a veritable masterpiece of the genre.

After a first disc devoted to the Italian composer’s sacred works, the Tenebrae Responsoria, Philippe Herreweghe and his Collegium Vocale Gent invite us to (re)discover his secular music for the 450th anniversary of his birth. In masterful fashion, they propose a delicate, expressive reading of this complex music, doing justice to the modernity of the musical language of the Prince of Venosa. The acoustics of the church in the little Tuscan village of Asciano, where the programme was recorded in 2015, provides an ideal sound setting for this music.

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Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – Bach: Johannes-Passion, BWV 245 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:47:04 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Phi

Bach’s St. John Passion, with its famous opening chorus traversed by shadows and light, is a powerful musical and spiritual reflection. Dramatic, grandiose, complex, resolutely theatrical: there has been no lack of superlatives to describe this supreme masterpiece of western music. Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent present an accomplished reading that reflects their knowledge of the composer, based on extensive research and deepened by countless concerts. Soloists Krešimir Stražanac and Maximilian Schmitt demonstrate the breadth of their talents in the roles of Jesus and the Evangelist.

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Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe – Victoria: Officium Defunctorum (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 59:38 minutes | 561 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Phi

Tomás Luis de Victoria is definitely one of the most important composers in the music history of Spain. His masterpiece is the ‘Officium Defunctorum’, published in Madrid in 1605. In this requiem – written for the funeral of Maria of Austria, daughter of Emperor Charles V – the composer reached a mystical intensity of expression.

Philippe Herreweghe just loves composers “who know how to build entire worlds with sounds, recognizable from the first notes, profound and full of richness”. For him Tomás Luis de Victoria is one of them, “one of the greatest musical minds ever”.

So it was an obvious choice for Philippe Herreweghe to make a recording of this heavenly ‘Officium Defunctorum’. And… of course Collegium Vocale Gent – with its cristal clear sound – is the perfect instrument to perform such music. Looking forward to the first renaissance project of Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent for the label Phi!

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Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:20 minutes | 812 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Phi

Threni (1957-58) is his longest, most ambitious and complex dodecaphonic score, and probably one of its summits. A work like the Requiem Canticles (1966) goes even further in this direction: the composer’s last masterpiece, it seems to summarise in itself the evolution of an entire lifetime, combining elements from the different stylistic periods that punctuated his career – whilst marking a highpoint in the spiritual quest that became increasingly important in Stravinsky’s life. In this major album, Philippe Herreweghe reveals with conviction his love for the composer’s music, and under his sure, inspired direction, the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic reveal their pure poetry. Music-loving friends, be curious!

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Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe – Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:27:38 minutes | 1,45 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Phi

This is a long way from the richness of the gilt and mosaics of Venice’s San Marco, in this new Vespro della Beata Vergine by Claudio Monteverdi, recorded by Philippe Herreweghe in the summer of 2017. Above all, the Flemish chief is interested in intimacy; and he knows this extraordinary score like the back of his hand, having conducted it very often, recording it for the first time in 1986 (for harmonia mundi) with the Collegium Vocale Gent, La Chapelle Royale and the Sacqueboutiers of Toulouse.

Philippe Herreweghe is looking for the purest possible expression of piety, using a whole range of methods with sophistication, and a sparse but perfect unity between the vocal soloists and the solo instrumentalists. In this masterpiece, which represents an audacious alloy of the “stile antico” and the “stile moderno”, it seems that Philippe Herreweghe wanted to highlight the former. With its famous Virgin, flanked by Della Robbia’s saints and the mystery of its catacombs which lead who-knows-where, the beautiful church of San Francesco di Asciano, not far from Siena, is being used more and more for concerts and recordings: does its inspiring ambiance call out for music?  –  François Hudry

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Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – Gesualdo: Dolcissima mia vita. Madrigali a cinque voci, Libro quinto (1611) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:06 minutes | 936 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Phi

Philippe Herreweghe records his third disc devoted to a controversial figure in the world of music and art in general: Carlo Gesualdo, who had his wife murdered and is suspected of having his son smothered. This time Collegium Vocale Gent performs his fifth book of madrigals (1611), published two years before his death. A collection that even today contributes to the eternal debate: to what extent does art become impregnated with reality, and how can it be appreciated when it emanates from a mind living so close to horror? Here the bold dissonances and sometimes tortured expressiveness that can be perceived in his harmonic language offer food for thought. Can we speak of redemption through art for a murderous composer in the twilight of his life?

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Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe – Bach: Sonn und Schild, Cantatas BWV 4, 79 & 80 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:39 minutes | 1007 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Phi

For the fourth time on the Phi label, Philippe Herreweghe presents three cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach – 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. Philippe 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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