Collegium Vocale Gent and its founder Philippe Herreweghe continue their recordings of the works of Carlo Gesualdo with ‘Silenzio Mio’, which contains the Fourth Book of Madrigals, published in 1596. Regarded as one of the most eccentric composers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but also one of the most creative, he experiments here with new melodic and harmonic effects that enthralled listeners of the time. These innovations are applied to poems by Alessandro Guarini and several anonymous writers, all of which focus on the expression of personal feelings, particularly a ‘pathos’ new on the literary scene. A veritable historical testimony to the artistic turning point that occurred at the court of Ferrara in the early seventeenth century, this fourth book takes its place in the long-term recording project of Collegium Vocale, hailed by critics for its ‘homogeneity, contrapuntal transparency and luminosity, strikingly evident even in the most tormented pieces’ (Diapason).

Herreweghe’s Bruckner symphony cycle with the period instruments of his Orchestre des Champs-Elysees reaches the tremendous Fifth, a pivotal work in the composer’s development. As usual it’s a sober account, and nicely tailored, though the conductor’s knack for shaving away the sharp edges can be a mixed blessing.

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. 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.

Although frequently classified as an oratorio, C. P. E. Bach's Auferstehung und Himmeelfahrt Jesu is really a cantata. There are no named dramatis personae and it is evident from Emanuel Bach's own comments that he intended the work to have a partly didactic function. He also considered it, in his own words as "pre-eminent among all my vocal works in expression and in the composition". The author of the text was Karl Wilhelm Ramler, an important poet of the German Enlightenment whose texts had earlier attracted Telemann. Ramler and Bach engaged in a close collaboration over the Auferstehung and between Bach's setting of it in 1774 and the eventual publication by Breitkopf in 1787, composer and poet entered into a lively correspondence concerning the details and shape of the cantata. The first performance took place in Hamburg in 1778 when it was warmly received. Many subsequent performances were given culminating in three directed by Mozart in Vienna.

…This is the best you will ever hear of the "Spiritual Choir-Music of Heinrich Schuetz (1585-1672). This one-disk performance is a selection of ten of the 49 motets in Schuetz's 1648 opus, interspersed with six quite distinct selections from the Kleine Geistliche Konzerte of 1636. The two sources are radically different; the earlier works are in the operatic 'secunda prattica' style of Monteverdi, sung by soloists over decorated basso continuo; the later works are superbly old-fashioned choral polyphony of the 'prima prattica' of composers dead before Schuetz was born. As a concert listening experience, the combination is highly effective, offering a variety and sprightliness that a through-reading of the complete Geistliche Chormusic can't provide.

All Helmchen’s recordings for the PentaTone label have been award winners. The romantic and virtuoso piano concertos by Mendelssohn never became as popular as his violin concertos but are of just as high a calibre. Helmchen regularly works with Philippe Herreweghe and this collaboration has resulted in a very special album.

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.

After his years in London and the discovery of Handel’s Messiah, which had profoundly moved him, Joseph Haydn embarked on writing a large-scale religious work. For this very devout composer, this veritable act of faith would torment him for two years and from it would come an oratorio of penetrating intensity. After enjoying immediate success in Vienna, Die Schöpfung (The Creation) conquered the whole of Europe in less than a year.

Philippe Herreweghe and his Collegium Vocale Gent present their third project for Phi focussing on vocal music of the Renaissance. This time, it is the English composer William Byrd (c.1540-1623) who is being honoured. The title of the programme is that of Byrd’s motet Infelix ego, one of the greatest artistic statements of the 16th century. Its text is a meditation on Psalm 50, written by the Dominica Girolamo Savonarola, a remarkable man who waged a campaign against the corrupt Medici family in Florence.

Impressed by the Handel works that he heard in London, Haydn felt the need to compose oratorios. First came Die Schöpfung (‘The Creation’), which met with resounding success; then Baron Gottfried van Swieten proposed to Haydn an arrangement of James Thomson’s poem ‘The Seasons’. Initially, Haydn was little attracted by the text, which deviates from the classic oratorio based on a religious text, but subsequently let himself be convinced. The result, for three soloists, chorus and orchestra, is a vast pictorial fresco of Nature that describes landscapes and the feelings that they arouse. For the first time, Philippe Herreweghe gives us his own vision of an oratorium by Haydn.

The second project of Collegium Vocale Gent and Philippe Herreweghe for Phi to focus on Renaissance music is devoted to one of the most remarkable of all composers: Carlo Gesualdo. Both his life, characterised by extravagant and excessive behaviour, and his compositions left their mark on the history of music. Although best known for his secular music, he also wrote an almost equivalent number of sacred works that demonstrate his fervent faith.

Written one after the other in the space of just three months and with unprecedented energy, Mozart’s last three symphonies carry within them the aesthetic ideal of their composer, touched by a grace that is already pre-Romantic, and thus form an exemplary musical testament. The Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, a pioneering collective among period-instrument orchestras, reveals a richness, a modernity, a visionary complexity that prepares the way for the Beethovenian revolution.

For the third time on the Phi label, Philippe Herreweghe gives us the opportunity to (re)discover three cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach – Nimm von uns, Herr, du treuer Gott, BWV 101, Ihr werdet weinen und heulen, BWV 103 and Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit, BWV 115. After two albums of cantatas written during the composer’s first year in Leipzig (LPH006 and LPH012), the Belgian conductor and his Collegium Vocale Gent, orchestra and choir, will be performing three cantatas he composed during his second year as Kantor at St Thomas’s. The choir and vocal soloists are once again challenged to produce performances of subtlety and refined virtuosity, and the instrumentarium is as rich and colourful as those heard previously in this series.

Philippe Herreweghe directs these Schumann concertos with severity and urgency, with an impact that’s particularly strong in the opening movement of the A minor piano concerto. The soloist is Andreas Staier, who plays a mid-19th century J.B. Streicher instrument. But it’s not just the use of period instruments (this is certainly the kind of piano Schumann would have known) that proves so fascinating here; rather, it’s the minutely detailed way in which soloist and conductor interact during this performance. Note, for instance, how astutely Herreweghe’s wind players articulate the sorrowful first subject group after the soloist’s opening salvo, a passage that sets the tone for all that follows.

After the success of his recordings of Symphonies nos. 1, 3 and 4, released on the Phi label in 2016, Philippe Herreweghe offers us the next instalment of Schubert’s orchestral output with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic: the Symphony no.2 D. 125 and Symphony no.5 D. 485 – both in B flat major. Like those on the previous disc, these works from his youth – written when the Viennese composer was not yet twenty years old – mark the promising beginnings of an already highly accomplished composer.