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Reviewer:
Richard Lawrence No: concentrate on the original dramatic situations. The largest element is some 20 minutes of highlights from Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie. In ‘Puisque Pluton est inflexible’, Theseus begs his (absent) father to release him from the Underworld. Stéphane Degout could make more of the climactic ‘Grand dieu’, where the orchestra falls silent for a moment. Back in the light of day, Theseus makes a final request to Neptune, Degout’s warm baritone beautifully expressing the character’s suffering. Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo is powerful in Phaedra’s great scene of remorse; and Raphaël Pichon daringly prolongs the silence before the chorus’s final ‘Hippolyte n’est plus!’. Degout does rise splendidly to the climax of ‘Monstre affreux’ from Dardanus, after an equally intense – but soft – beginning of the reprise. A sequence from Zoroastre introduces Emmanuelle de Negri, who joins Degout in summoning evil spirits. The Pygmalion chorus comes into its own in sections of the Requiem, an anonymous adaptation from Castor et Pollux. The last one finds Degout in a rapt account of ‘Requiem aeternam’, more familiar as the soprano Télaïre’s ‘Tristes apprêts’. The Gluck excerpts include a cough and a spit for Stanislas de Barbeyrac as the Danish knight in Armide. In ‘Le calme rentre dans mon coeur’ from Iphigénie en Tauride Pichon underemphasises the restless figure in the violas that belies Orestes’ words. But the three orchestral numbers from Orphée et Eurydice are vividly played: stentorian brass for the Furies and a limpid flute in the D minor section of the ‘Ballet des Ombres heureuses’. It’s back to Rameau for the very end, an exquisite, languorous ‘Entrée de Polymnie’ from Les Boréades. Forget the ‘end of time’ conceit and marvel at the music, so winningly performed by Pygmalion and Raphaël Pichon. |
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