Raphaël Pichon began his musical apprenticeship on the violin, piano and voice, training at various Paris conservatoires (CNSM and CRR). As a young professional singer, he performed under the baton of leading figures such as Jordi Savall, Gustav Leonhardt and Ton Koopman, as well as with Les Cris de Paris.
In 2006 he founded Pygmalion, a choir and orchestra on period instruments. Bach’s Missae Breves, late versions of Rameau’s great lyric tragedies, and Mozart rarities are all works that form the basis of Pygmalion’s identity, in a work centred on the fusion between choir and orchestra and in a dramaturgical approach to concert performance.
Recent highlights include his debuts at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence with the premiere of Trauernacht, directed by Katie Mitchell, and the rediscovery of Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo at the Opéra National de Lorraine and in Versailles, the spatialisation of Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine with Pierre Audi, the cycle of artistic encounters around Bach cantatas at the Philharmonie de Paris, the complete Motets and Mass in B by J-S. Bach’s, a staged version of J. Brahms’s German Requiem by Jochen Sandig in Bordeaux’s submarine base, and the staged creation of Mozart’s Requiem by Romeo Castellucci.
In 2020, Raphaël Pichon created the Pulsations festival in Bordeaux, an eclectic and polymorphous celebration, programming exceptional concerts in unexpected venues.
As a guest conductor, he made his debuts at the Salzburg Festival in 2018 alongside the Mozarteum Orchester, and at the Berlin Philharmonie alongside the Deutsches Symphonies-Orchester.
He has notably conducted the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Les Violons du Roy, the Freiburger Barockorchester, the SWR Symphonieorchester, the Handel & Haydn Society in Boston, the Vienna Philharmonic… In 2024-2025, he conducts New York’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall in ‘Mein Traum’ (Schubert, Schumann, Weber), as well as the Mahler Chamber Orchestra on a tour of Germany and Austria.
His recordings (with label harmonia mundi) include the imaginary opera Enfers with baritone Stéphane Degout, Libertà! (an homage to Mozart’s little-known masterpieces), the Motets and Matthäus-Passion by J.S. Bach, Mein Traum (Schubert, Schumann, Weber), Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine, Mozart’s Requiem.
Raphaël Pichon is an Officer in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
