Music festival Collegium Vocale Crete Senesi | 2018

Collegium Vocale Crete Senesi is an annual music festival under the artistic direction of Philippe Herreweghe in the beautiful region of the Crete Senesi in Tuscany.

In 1970, Philippe Herreweghe founded the Ghent choir Collegium Vocale Gent. They were one of the first ensembles to use new ideas about baroque performance practice in vocal music. Authenticity is the core concept on which Collegium Vocale measures the value of music.
About this historical execution practice, Bert Schreurs, general director of the company, writes

What we can do is to try to rid musical tradition of the ‘noise’ that inevitably arises in the transfer from one generation of musicians to the next, with utmost care and precision. This basic attitude is of essential importance and is embedded in the concept of authenticity. Accordingly, authenticity in its original sense of ‘made with one’s own hands’ (…).

Stefan Hertmans wrote very beautifully about this question for the occasion of Philippe Herreweghe’s 70th birthday in his text Omzichtige Radicaliteit (Prudent Radicalness’):

‘what is authentic is the attention to detail in the score, to understand what is on the page – not so much all the vague idealistic notions about what the intention can be, but what is concretely expected of the performer from measure to measure. Of course, this also assumes context – cultural context, historical context, an understanding of the framework in which a given musical idea developed – but its core remains an ascetic interest in the concrete, or even more so: an interest that refuses to appropriate the historicizing intentions of the music …. It assumes subservience and sovereignty in one.'

 

Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent present a highly accomplished version of one of the masterpieces of seventeenth-century sacred music, Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine [repetition in the Chiesa di San Francesco, Asciano, 2017]

Program 2018 | From Sunday July 29 th till Friday August 3th

Conducting artists include Paul Lewis, Philippe Thuriot, Tiburtina Ensemble, Huelgas Ensemble, Edding Quartet & Northernlight, Thomas Zehetmaier and Ruth Killius, Reinbert de Leeuw and Barbara Hannigan, Soloists Royal Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam and Collegium Vocale Gent.
A season ticket gives you an exclusive concert: the concert with Tiburtina in the famous Abbazia Sant'Antimo.
Another special event will be Un giro de begl’occhi, the performance of Claudio Monteverdi’s Madrigals from Book I-VIII by Collegium Vocale Gent and Philippe Herreweghe in the marvelous setting of the Sant’Anna in Camprena monastery. Look for the beautiful frescos by Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (Il Sodoma) in its Refectory.

Before each evening concert, a free drink is offered in the square at the entrance of each concert venue. After each evening concert you can subscribe to a dinner. 

Collegium Vocale Crete Senesi is an organization of Collegium Vocale Gent.