After their “sacred trilogy” in spring 2022, focusing on Bach’s music dedicated to the figure of Jesus, Pygmalion returns under the direction of Raphaël Pichon with a program of the composer’s cantatas.

For Raphaël Pichon, Bach was a childhood revelation: at the age of nine, he sang a St. John Passion, and the experience had the effect of an electroshock. Bach is the indispensable focus of my musical life,” he explains. His work is so rich, so immense, that it offers us the possibility of tirelessly returning to it to discover new territories and new details. The program he has devised for this new concert brings together several of the composer’s cantatas (including Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott BWV 80, based on one of the Protestants’ most beloved hymns) with the Sanctus from the future Mass in B, composed in 1724, and an aria by his father’s cousin. He entitled it Time and Eternity, after the title of one of the composer’s bedside books, which attempted to explain the significance of each of the Gospels.

First part: 48 min

Intermission

Second part: 39 min