In 2006, Raphaël Pichon brought together a few fellow instrumentalists and singers from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris at short notice following a request from the Europa Bach Festival: Ensemble Pygmalion was born.
Pygmalion's first successes were with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach: the concerts and recordings of the “Missae Breves” in 2008 and the “Missa of 1733” in 2012 met with public enthusiasm and critical acclaim. In 2013, faithful to the historically informed approach, Raphaël Pichon reconstructed Bach's Trauer-Music for the Prince of Köthen, a lost cantata recorded on the Harmonia Mundi label. “Trauernacht”, a show based on Bach's cantatas and directed by Katie Mitchell, was a highlight of the Aix-en-Provence Festival in summer 2014. In 2019, Pygmalion performed there with a choreographed version of Mozart's Requiem directed by Romeo Castellucci: an artistic performance and a testament to the societal commitment of the ensemble and its conductor.
Pygmalion was quickly followed by the lyrical tragedies of Jean-Philippe Rameau: “Hippolyte et Aricie”, “Dardanus” and “Castor et Pollux” have been performed at the Beaune Festival, in Versailles, at the Opéra Comique and at the Opéra de Bordeaux where the ensemble is in residence. In this city, the Pygmalion team presented “Le Kiosque”, a series of concerts putting the young generation of musicians to the fore. And here it also invented the Pulsations festival within a few weeks in June 2020, in response to the economic and cultural crisis. Pulsations 2021 was marked by the creation of “Requiem Humain” around Brahms' A German Requiem.