Next year, Pygmalion will make its Australian debut at the Adelaide Festival with a series of concerts surveying the European Baroque.

A three-course feast of early music and a star-powered production by the late Robert Wilson are among the banner events for Adelaide Festival 2026.

This month features a Kurt Weill trifecta, idiomatic Dvořák symphonies from the Czech Phil, a major Joshua Bell rediscovery and a radical take on Mozart’s Requiem.

Pichon’s perspective brings upswing and insights to Mozart’s swansong.

Powerful program and refulgent vocals make Mein Traum a dream of a disc.

This year the annual festival not only filled the streets of the ancient French city with music, but it also breathed new life into an abandoned stadium with Mahler's Resurrection.

A thoughtful French account of Bach’s universal masterwork.

Premiering in Aix-en-Provence earlier this month, the radical, beautiful staging of Mozart’s final, unfinished work has electrified audiences.

Ten years ago in Paris Raphaël Pichon founded Pygmalion, a superb ensemble of period specialists, and since then they have steadily built a fine discography; their Bach Masses on the Alpha label have garnered raves as have their Rameau, but this latest release should raise their stock considerably. In order to bring to life the genesis of opera, Pichon has contrived the sort of spectacle that the Medici court was famed for at the end of the 16th century. We all know the story of the Florentine Camerata, though few examples of their experiments are extant, but we do have the intermedi of Peri, Malvezzi, Marenzio and others along with the fragments of operas by Peri, Caccini and Gagliano. Recreating a grand wedding festivity, two mini-operas on the stories of Apollo and Orpheus are bookended by celebrations of love and marriage. From the tenor’s opening cry of Stravaganza D’amore, joined by choirs, sackbuts, cornetti and a lavish continuo with every imaginable plucked instrument, I was hooked and listened through both discs entranced. The soloists are splendid. Sophie Junker produces a gorgeous sound; her O che felice giorno by Caccini, an early highlight. Renato Dolcini raises a smile with… Continue reading…