Raphael Pichon

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.

Now presented complete, Raphaël Pichon and Pygmalion’s exceptional Lutheran Mass performances, in this often unjustly neglected genre, remind us of Bach’s telling psychological shift in the early 1730s from ephemeral duty to collating collections of music for posterity. The four parody Missae breves, comprised of a Kyrie and Gloria only, in the north German way, were compiled by Bach from cantata movements he clearly admired and felt could be productively recycled. Then there’s also the Missa of 1733 – the work which Bach offered to the new Elector of Saxony in search of wider recognition and which was to become the blueprint for that summa anthology, the Mass in B minor – now assembled with the others and strengthening the identity of Bach’s Mass oeuvre further.

This video was recorded live at performances of the original version of 'Dardanus' (1739) given at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux in April 2015, in a production by Michel Fau and choreography by Christopher Williams. Raphaël Pichon, the Ensemble Pygmalion and a peerless line-up of soloists received unanimous acclaim from public and press alike.
“van Mechelen rises splendidly to his major dramatic interventions and Florian Sempey as his rival Antenor is commanding and resonant. Michael Fau’s production with effective use of gesture and dance, and Emanuel Charles’s highly coloured, stately sets make for a very handsome visual presentation … Pygmalion provides vigorous and expert orchestral accompaniment, and Raphael Pichon’s assured direction secures superb coordination with the soloists and the firmly focused chorus.” (BBC Music Magazine)

At the height of the famous Querelle des Bouffons (1754), the elderly Rameau yielded to insistent requests from the Académie Royale de Musique for a major revision of Castor and Pollux, 17 years after the lukewarm reception of its premiere. He deleted the Prologue and made substantial modifications to the dramatic structure, with a completely new first act! But the original has continued to overshadow the revision, unjustly so when one considers the modernity of its orchestration. The inspired direction of Raphaël Pichon shows the extent to which this music heralds the Classical orchestra.

Late sixteenth-century Florence was a theatre: first and foremost a political one, in the eyes of the dynasties that wished to use the arts to display their power. A humanist one too, as is shown by these intermedi (interludes) that sought to achieve the perfect blend between music and poetry, the ideal of a certain Renaissance. Inserted into plays imitating the ancient writers, these entertainments were presented with lavish visual and musical resources. After reaching an initial peak in 1589 with the intermedi composed for Bargagli’s La pellegrina, this tradition was prolonged in the burgeoning genre of opera by such composers as Peri, Caccini (Euridice, 1600) and, very soon, Monteverdi (L’Orfeo) and Gagliano (Dafne).