On 29 October at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre the ensemble Collegium Vocale Gent directed by its founder Philippe Herreweghe will be performing Claudio Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine for the first time. In the year marking four and a half centuries since the birth of Monteverdi, the Belgian ensemble is dedicating many performances to the composer, presenting his works at venues from Amsterdam to Moscow.
The anthology of hymns in praise of the Virgin, combined under the title Vespro della Beata Vergine da сoncerto, composto sopra canti fermi, translated as "Vespers of the Most Holy Virgin, composed for an ensemble based on cantus firmus", was printed by the Venetian publusher Ricciardo Amadino in 1610. There is no evidence about how Monteverdi's Vespro was created and where it was first performed. Today, this work is incredibly popular among lovers of Baroque music. In Russia Vespro della Beata Vergine was first performed in Moscow in 2014.
The name of conductor Philippe Herreweghe – a recipient of numerous prizes and awards and an Honorary Doctor of the Gent University and the Loewen Catholic University – is well-known to aficionados of early music. Established in 1970 on his initiative, the Collegium Vocale Gent (in the 1990s it included an instrumental ensemble) was one of the first ensembles that began to perform baroque music with non-vibrato voices. The clear sound, the refined and sharpened articulation and the attention to the text and baroque rhetoric – even today these qualities make the sound of the Collegium Vocale Gent stand apart. The musicians appear at major music festivals in Europe, the USA, Russia, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and countries in South America. The ensemble's discography includes over a hundred recordings, produced in collaboration with Philippe Herreweghe. An important part among them is occupied by the work of Claudio Monteverdi, which the ensemble has embraced since its very inception. In the late 1970s Herreweghe and the Collegium Vocale Gent recorded the album Selva morale e spirituale, Vespro della Beata Vergine following ten years later.
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