Philippe Herrewege, a Versatile Musical Shrink

With his activities as a conductor and his extensive discography the Fleming Philippe Herreweghe (1947-) has become one of the stars of the international music industry. His road to fame started with early music. With his choir, Collegium Vocale, he was the first to apply the principles of authentic performance technique to vocal music, and especially to that of Johann Sebastian Bach. He also established other ensembles, such as the Chapelle Royale and the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées, and became musical director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Flanders. And the man who was trained as a psychiatrist did not stop at this: music of late-romantic composers such as Mahler, Brahms, Bruckner and Fauré holds no secrets for Herreweghe, and twentieth-century greats like Stravinsky, Schönberg and Weill do not escape his notice.