Adelaide Festival review: Ensemble Pygmalion – Bach: Good Night World
Ensemble Pygmalion are unarguably one of the new forces in Baroque music. Their opening concert, devoted to the music of JS Bach and his forebears, was sublime.
One wonders how Matthew Lutton chanced upon Pygmalion, the French early music group that has captured immediate attention in his first Adelaide Festival as artistic director. But thank God he did, because while there has been a certain unavoidable thinness about his 2026 program – caused by the fact that a centrepiece opera is conspicuously missing – this brilliant ensemble has already ticked all the boxes in their first showing.
Clearly based on how capably they perform J.S. Bach and German seventeenth-century music, they are front rankers in the sphere of period performance – easily the equal of Les Arts Florissants and Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, for example.
Pygmalion may still be an unfamiliar name, for while this ensemble started two decades ago in 2006 under conductor Raphaël Pichon, it has risen to prominence only fairly recently with a string of recordings for Harmonia Mundi Its St Matthew Passion in won particular acclaim in 2022.
Pygmalion are noted for the size of their membership (exceeding 160 musicians), and the first thing one felt confident to say is that the 12-piece orchestra and 10 singers Pichon has brought out to Adelaide must be the cream of his ensemble.
They sounded sublime in a treasure trove of music from Hassler and Schütz to Bach.
To hear first Adam Drese’s Nun ist alles überwunden was to be reminded of just how rich this body of music is. This little aria is the simplest piece but tearfully affecting and furnished with deep, lustrous harmonies from a pair of violas da gamba, cello, double bass and chamber organ. And how majestic these instruments looked and sounded together – even if the carved head on one of the gambas appeared distinctly demon-like, with its pointy ears sticking out on either side.
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The truth of what this song is about revealed itself in the final words of each verse: “World, farewell, good night”, the singer repeats in a low whisper, calling an end to life’s disappointments and praying for a better lot in heaven.
Soprano’s Julie Roset’s exquisitely pure-toned voice and sincerity were transfixing against the purring, closely woven texture of these gut-strung instruments.
Nothing could hide the intense melancholy in this music from three centuries ago. Remarkably, it almost looks towards Schubert, except that it is tied absolutely to Lutheran faith with the doctrine of salvation at its core.
Not all will have been familiar with the clutch of composers who followed, but three were from that most devout and prolific family, the Bachs from Germany’s Thuringia region.
Besides JSB himself, two of his elder cousins were represented, Johann Michael Bach and Johann Christoph Bach. Their pieces were similarly simple in construction but harmonically strong and emotionally powerful. In Johann Michael Bach’s sinfonia from ‘Auf, lasst uns den Herren loben’, we hear hymn-like chords from the string consort over which a solo violin seems to invent its own decorated, improvisatory melody.
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Pygmalion’s playing is so carefully balanced and immaculately refined that smaller items like this sinfonia emerge as unquestioned masterpieces of their time.
It’s even more the case with Johann Christoph Bach. His ‘Ach, dass ich Wassers gnug hätte’ in an incomparably lovely cantata from the mid-Baroque, and it is likewise themed around the idea of redemption from the burdens of earthly pain and sin.
René Jacobs and the Kuijken Consort brought it to light memorably years ago, and Pygmalion’s performance captured its intensity all over again. This cantata goes low for a soprano, but the darker voice of Maïlys de Villoutreys suited it excellently, and with tears falling like rivulets in its words from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, this piece’s descriptive power was totally captivating.
Immediately one could see why JS Bach called Johann Christoph “the profound composer”.
Dieterich Buxtehude is another whom he obviously admired, reputedly footing it all the way from Arnstadt to Lübeck to hear him play the organ. His ‘Jesu mein Lebens Leben’ with full choir was just as expressive, attaining a rapturous beauty in anguish and darkness.
Interest naturally fell on three works by the master himself, and to hear Pygmalion Ensemble performing two of JSB’s motets and an early cantata was to realise how they excel with his music. Their shaping and blending of vocal layers, their precision of tuning, and their deep enquiry into the texts all speak of an art that Pichon has personally researched and perfected. It is beyond what other ensembles seem to be able to manage.
‘Jesu, meine Freude’ BWV 227 is amongst his most complex works and a real endurance test for any choir. Vocal lines climb over each other and descend into bleak introspection at the words “And, oh life of vain endeavour, good night forever”. But this is before Bach ultimately points us to hope in the divine.
Either side of that, ‘Lobet den Herrn’ BWV 230 leapt out joyously, and the contemplative early cantata ‘Nach dir Herr verlanget mich’ BWV 150 brought a sense of restful completeness to this concert.
Many items segued without break, which made the program compellingly interesting but also at times difficult to follow. Additionally, eight pages of text and translations were hard to manage. Here was an obvious case for surtitles.
Never mind that, Pygmalion captured the heart and soul of this music. They are superlative.
Ensemble Pygmalion performed Bach: Good Night World at Adelaide Town Hall on Friday February 27 as part of Adelaide Festival
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