Pygmalion

Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon – Stravaganza d’amore! The Birth of Opera at the Medici Court (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:42:43 minutes | 1,88 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

What was the context in which so great a masterpiece such as Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo could be born back in 1607, invested with such beauty, endowed with such profundity of expression and so perfect a structure, at a time when the operatic form was still in its infancy? These are precisely the questions that lie at the origin of this recording project, giving Pichon and his musicians the opportunity to discover the astonishing musico-dramatic productions that preceded L’Orfeo, notably those performed at the Medici court in Florence, in which one may discern the seeds of numerous elements to be found in L’Orfeo. At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, it was ovbviously the city of the Medici that was the main focus of one of the most fascinating moments in the history of music: the birth of opera. Concentrating on the years from 1589 to 1611, i.e. the premiere of the intermedi for theatre piece called La pellegrina at one end and the performance in Florence of Marco da Gagliano’s Dafne at the other, Pichon has devised four imaginary “interludes” – inspired by the form of the intermedio so popular at this period – in which he assembled some of the finest examples of the first stirrings of opera, the music pieces of which are signed Lorenzo Allegri, Antonio Brunelli, Giovanni Battista Buonamente, Giulio Caccini, Emilio de’ Cavalieri, Girolamo Fantini, Marco da Gagliano, Cristofano Malvezzi, Luca Marenzio, Alessandro Orologio, Jacopo Peri and Alessandro Striggio. In imitation of the ancient theatre, intermedi were entertainments inserted between the acts of plays, with sumptuous visual effects, which provided a pretext for allegories to the glory of the reigning dynasty. The place of music and the fantastic element in theatrical performances acquired an ever grander and more spectacular character, thanks notably to the genius of set designers and the progress made in the domain of stage machinery. Seeing the artistic and political potential of the genre, the powerful princely families of the northern half of Italy (Gonzagas, Este and Medici, as well as the papal court), encouraged its development. Intermedi ended up occupying so important a place that they became a show within the show, with the aim of dazzling the audience. It was in 1589 that the Florentine tradition of intermedi attained its zenith, with the six sumptuous entertainments devised by Count Bardi to accompany the comedy La pellegrina, performed on the occasion of the wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando I and Princess Christina of Lorraine, grand-daughter of Catarina de’ Medici. In their variety and novelty, with a balanced combination of polyphony and the nascent monody, not forgetting instrumental and dance music, the intermedi of 1589 opened the way for an integrally sung form of theatre. And indeed it was once again Florence that witnessed the first examples of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the perfect model of the alliance between poetry and music. At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, a veritable laboratory was set up in Florence, prompting poets and composers to bring together several forms of musical expression in a single place? Building on the models established by earlier generations, composers continued their experiments with sound-space and the spatialisation of music, what with the proliferation of echo effects in the early monodies, or madrigals featuring dialogues between as many as seven independent choirs. But how can one tell this story nowadays, revive this rich adventure? The solution chosen for this recording was to create from scratch a large-scale imaginary work, resembling an initiatory journey, that would weld these multiple works into a single whole.
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Pygmalion & Raphaël Pichon – Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:42:45 minutes | 1,83 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

After ‘Stravaganza d’amore’, their superb album of late sixteenth-century Florentine music, Raphaël Pichon and Pygmalion return to Italy, this time to Mantua. Here they offer us their reading of one of the peaks of sacred music from this period: Monteverdi’s Vespers. Revealing like no other interpreters the poignant interiority of these pieces, they bring out to the full their inherent sense of theatre. An overwhelming experience.

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Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon – Libertà! Mozart & the opera (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:44:34 minutes | 1,91 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

A challenge. This is a disorienting, provocative, and terribly refreshing album. Before launching headlong into the “Da Ponte-Mozart Trilogy”, Raphaël Pichon undertakes a spirited exploration of the themes, throwing all these pieces together into a three-part “pasticcio”, with the help of Mozart’s earlier works and those of his contemporaries. To do this, Pichon and his arrangers use concert arias, nocturnes, canons, unfinished operas with characters and situations that evoke those of the trilogy. They have thrown together a delicious miniature trilogy “like a sort of musical apéritif.”

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Pygmalion & Raphaël Pichon – Johann Sebastian Bach: Motets (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:15 minutes | 1,42 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Bach’s motets, most of them composed during the 1730s, are among his finest vocal works. They feature a meticulous attention to the musical expression of the word, employing a tremendous variety of tone-colors, textures and effects. On this recording, Raphaël Pichon and his ensemble Pygmalion bring out every nuance of these exceptional choral masterpieces.

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