Critic’s Notebook: Drop-dead gorgeous: Pygmalion plays Shakespeare — en français

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Zum Sterben schön: Ein Requiem für Ophelia mit Pygmalion im Konzerthaus

G.Fauré, Requiem (v.1900) K.Battle, A.Schmidt C.M.Giulini / Philharmonia DG

G.Fauré, Requiem (v.1893) A.Mellon, P.Kooy P.Herreweghe / La Chapelle Royale Harmonia Mundi

A.Thomas, Hamlet T.Hampson, J.Anderson, S.Ramey, D.Graves A.De Almeida / LPO EMI/Warner

The French ensemble’s musical Hamlet-synthesis culminated in a heavenly Fauré Requiem

Music-as-theatre — that’s a concept Raphaël Pichon and his Ensemble Pygmalion have been embracing for a while now. By threading a dramatic arc through a series of thematically and musically connected works, they often bring lesser-known pieces out into the light. They’ve done it with Bach (Köthener Trauermusik), resurrected early Mozart (“Liberta!”, both Harmonia Mundi), and in Salzburg this summer they will give Mozart’s unfinished stage works an outing, propped up and united by some dramatic scaffolding (Zaide, or the Way towards the Light).

Saturday night at the Konzerthaus, it was Ambroise Thomas’s grand opéra Hamlet and Fauré’s Requiem, joined by rarely performed Berlioz (Tristia, Parts 1 and 3, but not “La mort d’Ophélie”) that formed a full-length program under the title/theme: Requiem pour Ophélie.

Since Thomas’s Hamlet is a rare guest at the opera house (last seen in Vienna in 2012, also with Stéphane Degout) and comes with its longueurs, hearing its best scenes in this concentrated form was a treat. Sabine Devieilhe—with her agile voice, secure high notes, and dramatic punch—lent the music a quality bordering on outrageous and made an Ophelia to die for. Degout: powerful, open, warm, sonorous, and without a trace of nasality. What more could one want?!

Still more, as it turned out! Fauré’s Requiem — unquestionably one of the most beautiful of its kind — offered everything the heart could desire. The orchestra, with its colourful, rich yet pliant sound, a sublimely musical harp, and a harmonium that chimed in (in the best sense) like a cross between synth and accordion, was sheer joy. The superbly blended, earthy-sounding chorus was its equal in tonal and executive quality. And by the time Devieilhe reached her “Pie Jesu” and “In Paradisum,” all that was left was childlike wonder and quiet bliss. It’s hard to hold back the tears, when faced with such beauty.


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Briefly Noted: Pichon's 1610 Vespers (CD of the Month)

Monteverdi, Vespro della beata vergine, Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon (released on September 1, 2023) Harmonia Mundi HMM902710.11 | xx'xx

Claudio Monteverdi is a favorite composer, and there is no piece of his greater in my estimation than the Vespro della beata vergine. The Vespers of 1610, as the piece is sometimes known, has been reviewed in these pages many times, both in recordings and live. In other words, it would take a lot for me to be surprised by a new recording of this piece, but that is precisely what conductor Raphaël Pichon and his ensemble, Pygmalion, have done in their newly released recording. The opening movement, in which Monteverdi interweaves his brilliant brass fanfare from Orfeo with the opening versicle of the Vespers service, is adorned with added brass riffs. Then, just when I thought that Pichon was going to omit the final statement of "Alleluia" from this compact section, his forces delivered it, after a long pause, with expansive delicacy.

Pichon's St. Matthew Passion was a CD of the Month last year, and this release is no less fulfilling a listen. An older version of the Vespro, led by Frieder Bernius, remains my favorite because it is presented liturgically, rounded out with exquisitely performed chant. Pichon's approach could not be more different: where Bernius favors reserve and propriety, Pygmalion goes for spectacle, with a big chorus on many numbers, clarion brass, and splashy surprises of sound.

Not surprisingly, Pichon says in his booklet interview that he feels that "the Vespro is the first cinematic work in the history of music. Monteverdi’s dramatic genius means that each psalm (and especially the first three) is presented as a genuine scene of dramatic action. He sets the scene, and makes us feel, visualise, even touch it!" This situates the work in that most dramatic of stylistic periods, the Baroque, the same era that created the genre of opera. The experience Pichon wants is "immersive," and it is: as he puts it, "to attend a performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers is to experience ecstasy," in a way similar to a viewing of a room-filling work by Bernini.

Many elements will strike a listener familiar with the work as quite different. Pichon opts to eschew the "chiavette" system, by which the often high tessitura of some music of this period was transposed down by a fourth, as heard on many recordings. By not only adhering to the original keys, but also resorting to the high pitch standard of Italian tunings of the time (A set somewhere between 440 and 465 Hz), the singers add further virtuosic, one might say "operatic," intensity to many key climaxes.

Like most conductors, Pichon shuffles the order of numbers slightly in the work's final section. The most significant change is the interpolation of another piece by Monteverdi, Sancta Maria, succurre miseris (SV 328) from Promptuarium musicum, published in 1627, to serve as the "antiphon" to the Magnificat. (In his "liturgical" recording, Bernius added a chant antiphon with an almost identical text in this position.) The motet is followed by the litany-like Sonata sopra Sancta Maria, with which it shares intriguing melodic elements, as if the composer were alluding to one in the other. The concluding number is also a nod to cinematic style, as the Orfeo fanfare that opened the work returns, retrofitted to the closing formulas of Vespers.


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Briefly Noted: Pichon's Pygmalion Passion (CD of the Month)

Bach, St. Matthew Passion, J. Prégardien, Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon (released on March 25, 2022) Harmonia Mundi HMM902691.93 | 2h42

Raphaël Pichon's ensemble Pygmalion, founded in 2006, is another early music group I have been following closely in recent years. Although they have yet to make the trip to Washington, we have had plenty of chances to hear them via stream and recording. The group has released some fine Bach discs over the years, all with a specific goal in mind. As Pichon put it in an interview about their newest recording, "When I founded Pygmalion, I had a single certainty, one big dream: that we would give our first St. Matthew Passion for our tenth birthday." That is exactly what happened in 2016, with most of the musicians who ended up being recorded on this excellent set at sessions in April 2021 at the Philharmonie de Paris.

Pichon calls this "a consciously choral performance," with the solo singers also serving as section leaders in what is an exquisite choral sound. As the finishing touch, fifteen young singers from the Maîtrise de Radio France take the chorale tunes woven into the complex textures of the opening and closing movements of Part I, a part marked by Bach as "soprani in ripieno." The solo parts range from very good to excellent, with soloists from each choir taking the arias as Bach indicated and some of the characters named in dialogues given to other chorus members. The two superb sopranos, Sabine Devieilhe (whose solo album with Pygmalion has also been in my ears recently) and Hana Blažíková, lead the topmost sections of Choir I and II, respectively, as well as splitting the soprano arias.

Mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot is sublime in "Erbarme dich," as she was when she sang with Ensemble Correspondances recently. (She sang with the Maîtrise de Radio France in her youth, which is a nice connection to the young performers in the group now.) Julian Prégardien takes the part of the Evangelist with authority and beauty of tone, while baritone Stéphane Degout brings a plangent resonance to the part of Jesus, wreathed in its halo of strings. The instrumental contributions are all lovely, especially the soft flutes. The continuo realization has a pleasing variety, split among organ, harpsichord, and theorbo, all used quite inventively. Pichon has thought deeply about this massive score, which he has spoken about in interviews. There is no small chorale or bit of recitative that does not reflect the conductor's care for it, such as the last chorale in the work, "Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden," performed by the singers alone after the death of Christ. This marvelous rendition is both full-textured and brimming with the intimacy of historically informed performance practice.