Herreweghe: The Harmonia Mundi Years

This retrospective sampler set of Herreweghe's Harmonia Mundi recordings makes a good investment, especially at the current price (£29.99 for 30 CDs). Harmonia Mundi have included an excellent range of his performances of both well known, and less well known (at least to me) Baroque works. They have also taken care to underline Herreweghe's involvement with later music. So Bach's Matthew Passion is followed by Mendelssohn's Paulus. We are afforded two performances of the Faure Requiem with contrasting orchestral forces. The performances of nineteenth century repertoire are not always completely convincing (e.g. Beethoven's Choral symphony and Staier's Schumann Piano Concerto) but they are never uninteresting or merely dutiful. The Midsummer Night's Dream and Nuits d'Ete in particular struck me as beautifullly realized. Throughout the music comes to life; performances are anything but reverential.

I have bought a few box sets similar to this that are wonderful value but rarely dipped into once acquired. Since this box set arrived I have listened to very little else. All the recordings are of high technical quality. As a conductor Herreweghe draws out thoughtful and joyous performances. His orchestras tends to be relatively lightweight, transparent and articulate. The choral singing is similarly fresh and articulate. His solo artists are well chosen to match his style. None of the collection is less than thoroughly enjoyable and many items are outstanding - I would pick out JS Bach St Matthew Passion, Mozart Requiem Mass, Beethoven Missa Solemnis, Schumann Cello and Piano Concertos and Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn as particular highlights. Highly recommended.

Monsieur Herreweghe is one of the greatest conductors of our age, although we hear little about him in the UK. His recording of Faurę's Requiem is sublime and in my opinion, is the best available. Lots of other gems in this great value for money collection.

Great variation in repertoire but consistent high quality in both performance and sound. The last star is for price, this one is a giveaway.

Fantastic recordings and wonderfull music. Plus brilliant value for money. Love it

Of course it's great value. But honestly, would it have been hard to simply give basic indications of when each CD was recorded for example? All you get is track listing - which in this day of cheap boxes, has become what passes for luxury. I'm getting less and less excited by these boxes, now going back to buying individual CDs. After all, it's so easy to stream these days... If one is buying CDs, it's for the pleasure of using a physical media. Pleasure has been reduced to virtually nothing by some marketing team who thought they would make money off Herreweghe's name, with CDs many times recouped.My point is this: I understand the low-cost logic. I do not understand, nor accept, why it should be executed so poorly.Still a 5 star for music.

Well, except for that insane 27-CD Bach box set they sold for less than a month then pulled from the market... Also by Philippe Herreweghe. But fear not, here you can still get a healthy dose of his Bach, and a lot of other great works, at a fraction of their original cost.In the last twenty-five years or so, Herreweghe's recordings formed the backbone of Harmonia Mundi's choral music catalogue. And for very good reasons - he built a reputation as one of the foremost conductors in historically informed performances, which was one of HM's specialties, and he was (still is) the best at drawing out the most beautiful sounds from his performers.As far as HIP goes, I'd say Herreweghe is quite the moderate, but in the best way possible. Generally, his interpretations are very clean but not brisk, lean but not austere, sweet but never cloying. There is a sublime, ethereal quality that makes his recordings extremely pleasant to the ears (for me, at least). They might not be earth-shattering revelations, but there is certainly something to be said about finding spirituality in peaceful and beautiful things.HM didn't cut any corners in compiling this box set - all the important works are here. The more modern pieces - Mahler, Schoenberg, etc. - might be a bit divisive, but all the rest have been very well received; many are among the finest versions of the respective works. If you want to get a taste of what you're getting, his "Ein Deutsches Requiem", "St. Matthew's Passion", "Campra Requiem" are all essential, and make for great references in anyone's music library.Since I already own about 70% of the disks, I probably won't buy this box set, so I can't comment on the presentation. But HM has always given great care to their box sets in that aspect, so I don't think this one would be any different. If you don't already own many Herreweghe recordings, then this is definitely more than worth the price. Grab it before it disappears.