It is a great honor for Musica Presente Records to publish such a monumental and complex work and at the same time of an overwhelming expressive significance, composed by one of the most original composer on the international scene, Gérard Pape, extraordinary thinking mind, Lacanian psychoanalyst, great expert of electronic music that he used in many of his works but electronics are also combined with solo instruments, chamber and orchestral groups, vocal music and plays for the theater. In addition, Gérard Pape was director of the UPIC / CCMIX Ateliers, active from 1991 to 2007, then founded the C.L.S.I. (Cercle pour la Liberation du Son et de l’Image).
From the nineties to the present, many monographic CDs on Pape’s music have been released which well represent the evolution of his artistic career who, with the swirling and disturbing work presented here, “Le Purgatoire”, reaches one of the highest peaks. It is part of a large cycle called Sunset Time which consists of six days of ritual music. Rituality is one of Pape’s stylistic traits that is often expressed with imaginative and fantastic sound revelations, with unpredictable sound sequences, with powerful flows of voices and instruments in a continuous timbral transfiguration.
Surreal and dreamlike sounds accompany the journey of Dante and Virgil and of the other characters they meet, following them to the threshold of Paradise, sounds that also incorporate a formal conception of chaos, inserting realistic elements that balance the imaginative ones and that have the function of bringing us concretely in the spatialized time in which the journey takes place, touching the suffering of those who are atoning for sins, but music also makes us feel the path of purification that is represented by Purgatory, with moments of profound ecstasy of sound, of sound visions that evoke those of Dante, of emotional rapture, up to the intuition of pure Love symbolized by Beatrice.
This exceptional elaboration of Dante’s text took years of work, which began in 2018 and ended in 2021. The ‘libretto’ is by Michel de Maulne who takes up Dante’s Purgatory translated into French, we can speak of a libretto because the work is based on a strong and evident dramaturgy, an “electroacoustic theatrical music” as Pape defines it, which realizes, in addition to a composition with a shocking character, the male vocal parts including the choir, the instrumental ones and obviously the electronics and mixing, while Olga Krashenko is responsible for the interpretation of female voices also with the choir and instrumental parts. The mastering was done by Jean-Baptiste Favory, while the beautiful cover of this album is by Mario Coppola.
Impetuous and passionate, vehement and profound, attentive to the psychology of the characters and the passions that the scenes express, it is a composition of great wisdom and strength, a true masterpiece.
On Spotify and all digital music streaming services around the World since December 16th 2021.
Renzo Cresti
Artistic Director
MUSICA PRESENTE Records
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