Pygmalion, choir and orchestra ????
Director: Raphaël Pichon. Place and date: Palau de la Música (X/19/2023)
We already knew the good work of Mr. Pichon and on this occasion he came to sign a season opener “comme il faut”. The Palau – despite the theme of the program – was a party and the musical signature corroborated it. The boy Chadi Lazreq added an important amount of sensitivity and topicality to the plainchant of In paradisum, with the director’s good judgment of adding fragments unrelated to Mozart’s Requiem that focused the program, and with his naturalness and purity. But, in addition, that little antiphon that opened and closed the program mentioned the “civitatem sanctam Jerusalem”, a detail that brings us closer to the turbulent and explosive situation of that region and inhabitants. We wish it as a call to peace, perhaps the actors, unfortunately, are closer to the mortal allusion of the Requiem.
The session had ingredients that help define it as a conceptual starting point, eloquent in the sense of proposing a version with risk (it was not the usual Mozart Requiem), since the interspersed Mozartian fragments, both vocal and instrumental, in addition to very Well executed and assembled in tonal terms, they enriched the very irregular discourse of Mozart’s unfinished work.
And in addition to the conception of the program came the performance, excellent, rich in nuances and above all very marked by the director’s criterion of working on the phrasing with great tension, which sometimes even hardened the voices of the choir somewhat, although it was gained in expressiveness.
The choir did a monumental job, with very good identity of its sections (excellent alto and bass), something that we also saw in the solo quartet of the central work, in which it does not have a great role, but left us with the vocal depth of the mezzo Beth Taylor as a gift.
Above all, the work of the director was very important, in a very elaborate and refined work, aware of the resources available, working in depth on nuances, intensities, and counting on a quality instrumental response, highlighting woods. and metals. Pichon demanded conviction in the voices with a magnificent response in moments like the Sequentia, and above all he achieved, although not emotion (it is not a work that achieves that either), an inner spirituality that does communicate.
A great version, then, with depth of work and excellence. Good season everyone.
