Pygmalion & Raphaël Pichon – Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

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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Ensemble Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon – J. S. Bach: Köthener Trauermusik BWV 244a (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Ensemble Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon – J. S. Bach: Köthener Trauermusik BWV 244a (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:58 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

When Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen died in 1728, his former Kapellmeister had not forgotten the five brilliant years he had spent in the prince’s service. He dedicated to his memory a mourning cantata almost entirely based on the music of two major works of the mid-1720s, the Trauer-Ode and the St Matthew Passion. Although the score is lost, the wordbook and other sources of information have now made it possible to reconstruct the work. In his first recording for harmonia mundi, Raphaël Pichon invites us on an exciting musical treasure hunt.

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Raphaël Pichon, Pygmalion, Julian Prégardien, Stéphane Degout, Sabine Devieilhe, Lucile Richardot, Christian Immler, Reinoud van Mechelen, Maitrise De Radio France – J. S. Bach: Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Raphaël Pichon, Pygmalion, Julian Prégardien, Stéphane Degout, Sabine Devieilhe, Lucile Richardot, Christian Immler, Reinoud van Mechelen, Maitrise De Radio France - J. S. Bach: Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Raphaël Pichon, Pygmalion, Julian Prégardien, Stéphane Degout, Sabine Devieilhe, Lucile Richardot, Christian Immler, Reinoud van Mechelen, Maitrise De Radio France – J. S. Bach: Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:41:27 minutes | 3,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Dès le chœur d’entrée, Raphaël Pichon et son ensemble Pygmalion seront sensibles à la nuance, emplissant leur geste de couleurs et d’attentions finalement peu courantes dans ce moment le plus souvent marqué par l’ampleur et la densité du son. Les inflexions pianissimos, le soudain allégement des textures, le ton général chambriste placent cette Passion, devenue a posteriori le temple et sommet de l’expression dramatique religieuse du XVIIIe siècle, ailleurs. Bach y est ici le cousin direct d’un Georg Philipp Telemann dont les propres Passions présentent des effectifs plus restreints et parfois plus variés en terme d’instrumentarium. Elle s’inscrit aussi dans les perspectives doloristes des Membra Jesu nostri de Dietrich Buxtehude.
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Ensemble Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon – Rameau: Dardanus (Live Recording at l’Opéra Royal du Château de Versailles) (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Ensemble Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon – Rameau: Dardanus (Live Recording at l’Opéra Royal du Château de Versailles) (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:25:05 minutes | 1,42 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

After the exploration of Bach’s ‘five’ Missae Breves concluding with the success of the original version of the B minor Mass, Ensemble Pygmalion has recorded Rameau’s Dardanus following a series of concerts unanimously hailed by the critics.

Although superior from the dramatic point of view, this second version of Dardanus proposed by Pygmalion has never, until the present day, been resurrected, with the exception of the famous aria ‘Lieux funestes’ from Act IV. A new edition was carried out (by Gilles Rico) based on the 1744 edition, also incorporating the numerous variants integrated by Rameau between 1744 and 1760, as he constantly strove to enrich the music’s emotional power.

Originally stemming totally from the restrictive form of Lully’s tragédie lyrique but also attesting to a pronounced taste for ‘extraordinary stories’, this work presents a more intimate, human sense of the drama, thereby tracing a very clear path towards the psychological explorations of the Classical era.

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Ensemble Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon – Bach Missa 1733 (2012) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Ensemble Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon – Bach Missa 1733 (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:02:43 minutes | 698 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

The Ensemble Pygmalion continues its interpretative work on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, proposing the Mass in B minor, BWV 232 in its version of 1733.

Pygmalion’s first recording for Alpha, with Bach’s Missae Breves BWV 234 and 235 (ALPHA 130) was received very enthusiastically by the critics and awarded, in particular, the Diapason d’Or of the Year 2008 and the Orphée d’Or 2008 by the Académie du Disque Lyrique.

Given the work’s historical importance, this third recording by the ensemble is also the occasion for Raphaël Pichon to show the extent of his maturity, placing him in the front rank of today’s young conductors.

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Stéphane Degout, Pygmalion & Raphaël Pichon – Mein Traum. Schubert, Weber, Schumann (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Stéphane Degout, Pygmalion & Raphaël Pichon – Mein Traum. Schubert, Weber, Schumann (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:40 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

One morning in 1822, Schubert wrote down an enigmatic text in which all his ghosts seem to take shape: wandering, solitude, consolation, disappointed love. Inspired by this dreamlike narrative, Raphaël Pichon, Pygmalion and Stéphane Degout have devised a vast Romantic fresco, combining resurrection of unknown treasures with rediscovery of established masterpieces.

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Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon – Libertà! Mozart & the opera (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

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 – Stravaganza d’amore! The Birth of Opera at the Medici Court (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

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 | 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 – Johann Sebastian Bach: Motets (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

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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Stéphane Degout, Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon – Enfers (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Stéphane Degout, Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon – Enfers (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:27 minutes | 1,47 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

With his ensemble Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon has written the listing for this album in the form of a “pastiche” of a Mass for the Dead, a Requiem both sacred and profane. While it is a long way from having all the defining traits, it does possess all the outlines: Introit, Kyrie, Gradual, Sequence, Offertory, In Paradisum… The idea came about after a recent discovery, in the Bibliothèque Nationale of an anonymous requiem mass from the 18th century, in which the writer constructed a “parody” based on musical extracts from Castor and Pollux and the Fêtes de Paphos by Jean-Philippe Rameau. Note that the term “parody” doesn’t necessarily imply satire or mockery: it refers to the practice of taking up older music and setting new words to it. This fusion of sacred music (the mass) and profane music (lyrical tragedy), a common practice during the Enlightenment, was a procedure that Pichon wanted to take up.

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