L'affaire Raphaël

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.

Naxos intend to record Vivaldi’s entire orchestral corpus, and Raphael Wallfisch’s integral four-disc survey of the 27 cello concertos inaugurates this visionary, though plainly Herculean undertaking. Soloist and orchestra employ modern instruments; director Nicholas Kraemer contends that authentic protocols can be ably met by contemporary ensembles and, in articulation, style and ornamentation, these pristine, engaging readings have little to fear from period practitioners. Wallfisch’s pointed, erudite and spirited playing is supported with enlightened restraint by the CLS, directed from either harpsichord or chamber organ by Kraemer, whose sensitive continuo team merits high praise throughout. Without exception, these Concertos adopt an orthodox fast-slow-fast three-movement format. Wallfisch, dutifully observant in matters of textual fidelity, plays outer movements with verve, energy and lucidity, such that high-register passagework, an omnipresent feature of these works, is enunciated with the pin-sharp focus of Canaletto’s images of 18th-century Venice, which adorn the covers of these issues.

Spanish pop star Rafael Martos (born Miguel Rafael Martos Sánchez and globally as "Raphael") is one of Spain's best-known singers. His multi-octave range and flamboyant stage persona have entertained and engaged people worldwide since 1959. He is also a movie and television actor, and the father of Spanish movie director Jacobo Martos. Raphael is perhaps known best in his homeland for dramatically acting out his songs while on-stage. His record company, Hispavox, awarded him with the world's one and only "Uranium Disc" for his compilation album Ayer, Hoy y Siempre due to the impossibility of presenting him with 300 platinum discs – it sold 50 million copies.

The funeral of Louis XIV mirrored his reign: grandiose and filled with pathos. Raphaël Pichon has chosen the setting of the Chapelle Royale in Versailles, built ‘for the use’ of the Sun King, to present a musical reconstruction of the event, with chiaroscuro lighting designs by Bertrand Couderc. Solemn grands motets like the De profundis and Dies irae of Michel-Richard de Lalande and the poignant Marche funèbre pour le Convoy du Roy by André Danican Philidor are juxtaposed with rarely heard music by Jean Colin, Louis Chein and Charles d’Helfer. An outstanding performance by Pygmalion, filmed on the occasion of the tercentenary of the event, in November 2015.

In 1646, France's first minister, Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin, eager to bring Italian culture to Paris, hired Luigi Rossi to write an opera for the Paris carnival. The premiére was given a magnificent staging and the performance, which lasted six hours, was a triumph. However, the expense of the performance only stoked discontent against Mazarin, which soon broke out into full-scale popular rebellion. On this video, Raphaël Pichon and Ensemble Pygmalion recreate the magic of that first performance, thanks to a skillful musical reconstruction and the group's vibrant, multi-colored timbre. The dramatic power of the myth of Orpheus is brilliantly conveyed in Jetske Mijnssen's production, which transposes the story into contemporary terms, to evoke the timeless experience of love and death that humanity both desires and fears.

The Ensemble Pygmalion directed by Raphaël Pichon commences its collaboration with Harmonia Mundi with this new recording of J.S. Bach’s lost music to the Köthener Trauermusik (Cöthen funeral music), BWV 244a. Founded in 2006 at the European Bach Festival, Ensemble Pygmalion is a combination of choir and orchestra - all young performers with experience of authentic instruments and period-informed performance. Its repertoire concentrates primarily on Johann Sebastian Bach and Jean-Philippe Rameau.