"Purgatory is part of a large cycle called Sunset Time which consists of seven 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 the music also makes us feel the path of purification that is 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 20 years of work, which began in 2002 and ended in 2022. The libretto’ is by Michel de Maulne who takes up Dante’s Purgatory, here translated into French. We can speak of a libretto because the work is based on a strong and evident dramaturgy, an “electroacoustic music theater” as Pape defines it.

In addition to composing this overwhelmingly powerful music, Pape has realized all the male vocal parts, including male choirs, some instrumental parts, electronics and mixing, while Olga Krashenko is responsible for the interpretation of solo female voices as well as female choir and some instrumental parts. The mastering was done by Jean-Baptiste Favory, while the beautiful photographs used in this album are by Olga Krashenko. Impetuous and passionate, vehement and profound, attentive to the psychology of the characters and the passions that the scenes express, Purgatory is a composition of great wisdom and strength, a true masterpiece."