Pygmalion / Pichon

When Raphaël Pichon conducts Bach, the result is not a museum-like devotion, but a breathing theatre of sound. For almost two decades, the French conductor and his ensemble Pygmalion have been exploring the world of the St Thomas cantor – always in search of the point at which music not only narrates, but touches existentially.

His St Matthew Passion conceives the work as a human drama in sacred form: two choirs, two orchestras – but no force, no excess, instead an architecture of light and lines in which every detail remains audible. The famous choirs lose their monumental tone and gain in agility and closeness; the voices interweave to form a lament that sounds both earthly and enraptured.

Portrait artist Julian Prégardien as Evangelist
Julian Prégardien takes centre stage as the Evangelist – a narrator of unrelenting clarity and subtle empathy. His art of speaking and musical presence turn the story of suffering into an inner monologue about guilt, consolation and the possibility of redemption. This performance shows Bach not as a distant icon, but as a living contemporary – a composer who sought the human in the divine. Pichon's St Matthew Passion is not a reconstruction, but an invitation to listen in the present.