Cast
Philippe Herreweghe — Chorus director
Program notes
Choirmaster Philippe Herreweghe reveals his authenticity and his incredible energy throughout interviews, performances and rehearsal sequences.
With his various ensembles, among which the Collegium Vocale Gent, the Chapelle Royale, the Orchestre des Champs Elysées, the Jeune Orchestre Atlantique and the RIAS Kammerchor, Philippe Herreweghe is considered to have given baroque choral music its purity and freshness back. Always seeking a new material, he covers with his ensembles large musical periods of time and dips into the Renaissance heritage as much as in the contemporary repertoire.
Born in 1947 in Gent, Belgium, Herreweghe is a gifted young man, who, aside from his medicine and psychiatry studies, learns the piano and the organ at the conservatoire. In 1970, at only 23 years old, he starts his carrier as a conductor and creates his first ensemble, the Collegium Vocale Gent. In this documentary, the interviews of his relatives paint the portrait of a very talented musician who remained humble. Herreweghe is always “looking for a masterpiece”, and no matter how prestigious the piece he performs is, “it is always the most important of all when he conducts it”.
Thanks to Bach’s Cantatas, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, and Mozart’s, Schoenberg’s and Pascal Dusapin’s pieces, film director Sandrine Willems reveals the multiple aspects of this passionate man and his exceptional career.