Raphaël Pichon and his Ensemble Pygmalion return to the Palau de la Música Catalana with one of Mozart’s great sacred works, the Great Mass in C minor, at the heart of a programme conceived with the distinctive personal stamp of the French conductor. Pichon often surrounds masterpieces of the repertoire with music that broadens our perspective on them and sheds light on their connections. On this occasion, Mozart enters into dialogue with motets and works by Schubert, Mendelssohn and Bruckner, in a journey across different generations of sacred music that reveals continuities, resonances and new perspectives.

The Great Mass in C minor crowns this musical journey. Monumental yet deeply human, it is one of Mozart’s great vocal creations, a score in which the legacy of Bach and Handel coexists with writing of extraordinary dramatic power. Pichon, acclaimed for the vitality, rigour and narrative quality of his interpretations, offers his reading of the work at the head of Pygmalion and a vocal cast led by Sabine Devieilhe, alongside Xenia Puskarz Thomas, Kieran Carrel, Laurence Kilsby and Huw Montague Rendall.

A liturgical dimension runs through the entire programme, from Bruckner’s Christus factus est to Mendelssohn’s Da nobis pacem, an invocation for peace that resonates especially strongly with the guiding theme of the Palau’s season. A distinctly Pichon way of arriving at Mozart: not as an isolated work, but as the point where a musical narrative constructed over centuries comes together.