En pleine tournée des festivals d'été de musique classique ! Beaune, Ravel, MusikfestBremen, Abbayes en Lorraine
Hervé Niquet
Conductor & Founder of Le Concert Spirituel
Harpsichordist, organist, pianist, singer, composer, choirmaster and conductor, Hervé Niquet is one of the most inventive musical personalities of recent years, recognised as an eminent specialist in the French repertoire from the Baroque era to Debussy.
He founded his ensemble, Le Concert Spirituel, in 1987, aiming to revive the great French motet. Over the past 35 years, the ensemble has made its mark in the performance practice of the Baroque repertoire, rediscovering both well-known and rare european masterpieces of that time. Recently, the Choir has been awarded he Liliane Bettencourt Prize for Choral Singing 2020.
Believing that there is only one unbroken French music throughout the centuries, Hervé Niquet is invited as a guest conductor by many international orchestras, with whom he explores the repertoires of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as the OSM in Montréal (Canada), Kanazawa Orchestra (Japan), Münchner Rundfunkorchester (Germany), Sinfonia Varsovia (Poland), Orchestre Philharmonique Royal Liège and Vlaams Radio Orkest (Belgium), Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon and Casa da Musica Porto (Portugal), and in France, the Orchestre de chambre de Paris, Orchestre national de Lyon, Orchestre de l’Opéra de Rouen, Saint-Etienne, Orchestre national d’Ile-de-France, etc.
This season 2023/24, after Reynaldo Hahn’s O mon bel inconnu with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Hervé Niquet will lead both the Choir and Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse for six festive Christmas and New Year concerts, followed by two performances of Hector Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ, with Montréal Symphony Orchestra, and a staged production of Charles Gounod’s Le Tribut de Zamora at Saint-Etienne Opera House. The season will close with two concerts dedicated to Camille Saint-Saëns and Benjamin Godard at Rouen Opera House.
Hervé Niquet is also deeply involved in teaching. It is essential for him to pass on the fruit of his work on interpretation, the conventions of the time and the latest musicological discoveries, as well as the realities and demands of the musician's craft. He demonstrates this by giving master-classes at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique of Paris and Lyon, Schola Cantorum Basel (Switzerland), Mc Gill University in Montréal (Canada), Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Paris, Académie du festival d’Ambronay, Jeune Orchestre de l’Abbaye (Saintes), and through the professional training programme « La Pépinière du Concert Spirituel », welcoming and tutoring new students each season.
Hervé Niquet is the artistic director of the Saintes Festival’s 2023 and 2024 editions, and has been artistic director of Saint-Riquier Festival for 4 years between 2014 and 2017.
For his career, he has received a number of awards : Commander of Arts and Letters, Knight of Arts and Letters, and recently the Ehrenpreis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik for the quality and diversity of his recordings.
