The music of Johann Sebastian Bach resonates these days in the Pavillon de la Sirène, a renovated musical center in the 14th arrondissement of Paris whose origins date back to the 19th century. The French director receives EL PAÍS there Raphaël Pichon (Paris, 41 years old), immersed in rehearsals for the international tour he undertakes leading Pygmalion, his choir and orchestra ensemble with period instruments, with the Passion according to Saint Matthew.
The tour covers nine concerts that began last March 20 in Bordeaux, with stops at the National Auditorium of Madrid today, the 23rd, and at the Palau de la Música in Valencia tomorrow, the 24th, and will culminate in Paris next Good Friday, April 3, after passing through Zurich, Vienna, Amsterdam and Versailles. The tour arrives after magazine award Gramophone to his recording of the Mass in B minordistinguished as the best album of the year, and coincides with the release of his new Passion according to Saint Johnas well as with the group’s twentieth anniversary.
Upon arriving with the rehearsal already underway, from the hallway you can hear the beautiful aria Have mercy (“Have mercy on me”), a silky thread stretched between the voice of the mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot and Sophie Gent’s violin. But what impresses, once inside the room, is the organic fusion of Pygmalion’s voices and instruments in the chorale The world has judged me falsely (“The world has judged me falsely”), which they rehearse below. “That fusion is precisely the main desire and credo of our group since we started in 2006,” explains Pichon after the rehearsal, while taking a drag from his vape pen. “We wanted to eliminate the border between voices and instruments: for the singers to be as flexible as the instrumentalists and for the instrumentalists to sound as natural as a singer.”
Even the name of the group refers to that founding idea. Pichon’s first project, when he was 18 years old and studying at the Paris Conservatory, was a failed attempt to stage the opera-ballet Pygmalion of Rameau, involving dance and stage colleagues. “In 2003 it was very difficult to carry out projects like this and I was too young and inexperienced,” he admits. But from that failure he extracted a work ethic: “The story of a craftsman who sculpts every detail with passion. For me it meant that: working with dedication and generosity to shape music.”
The core of that project has always been Bach. “I wanted us to build our common experience around his music, step by step. We started with the short, lesser-known masses, where many elements of the great masterpieces are already present.” Critics enthusiastically welcomed his recording debut in 2008 on the Alpha labelunderlining the transparency, color and freshness of an unusual approach for a French ensemble.
“Everything has changed a lot in recent decades with William Christie, Christophe Rousset or Marc Minkowski, and this Good Friday several French groups will do the Passion according to Saint Matthew in Paris,” he points out. His approach—spacious, sumptuous and markedly dramatic—has been consolidated in recent years with reference recordings for Harmonia Mundi. “We have advanced honestly, without wanting to differentiate ourselves from anyone,” he says, citing influences that range from the drama of John Eliot Gardiner to the sonorous beauty of Philippe Herreweghe, the wisdom of René Jacobs or even the pathos of Herbert von Karajan and the objectivity of Karl Richter.
Pichon has gone further with his project Bach’s pathsin collaboration with ARTE and France Musique, starting in 2024. It is a journey on foot and by bicycle through the cities of Thuringia and Saxony linked to the composer. “It is a way to understand the simplicity of his life and to reduce the distance with his music, because no one like Bach knew how to translate humanity into sound.”
For this tour, Pygmalion brings together a double choir of 30 voices—from which the soloists emerge—and an equally doubled orchestra of 35 instrumentalists, including the five basso continuo players. During a break in the rehearsal it was possible to talk with several of its Spanish members, such as the Canarian flutist Raquel Martorell Dort and the Basque oboist Jon Olaberria, who also collaborate with other groups such as Bach Collegium Japan or Les Talens Lyriques. The German tenor is added to this cast Julian Prégardien (Evangelist) and the French baritone Stéphane Degout (Jesus).
“Julian has sung the Evangelist in the recordings of both passions and is able to bring tenderness to Juan’s story and contemplative nuances to Matthew’s,” explains Pichon. As for Degout, he will assume the role of Jesus on this tour, as he already did in the recording, while for the Passion according to Saint John the director had the English baritone Huw Montague Rendall. “Huw brings a lot of freshness to John’s story, but Matthew’s Jesus requires greater maturity, and Stéphane adds immense honesty.”
Pichon avoids prioritizing both passions: “Mateo’s is a human and universal drama; Juan’s introduces a more pronounced chiaroscuro, a tension between light and shadow in which the best and worst of human beings emerge.”
That dramatic dimension is perceived in the rehearsals. The score of Carus publishing house that Pichon uses is densely annotated with theological reflections, biblical quotations, and poetic observations. “Reopening this score five years later has been a fascinating experience. Both passions are infinite works,” he says.
Beyond the great choral numbers, the intensity of the rehearsal is concentrated in the arias: the soprano Julie Roset in My Savior wants to die out of love (“For love my Savior wants to die”), along with the flutist Georgia Browne; the bass Alex Rosen in Give me my Jesus back! (“Give me back my Jesus!”), with solos by violinist Louis Creac’h; or the countertenor William Shelton in May tears come to my cheeks (“If the tears fall from my cheeks”).
Versatility is another distinctive feature of the ensemble, whose repertoire ranges from the Renaissance to contemporary creation. They have started 2026 with a new production of Werther by Massenet at the Opéra Comique in Paris and are preparing the premiere of an opera by Oscar Strasnoy for the next season. His previous album offered a suggestive reading of A German requiem of Brahms, and will return to Madrid in March 2027 with the ninth symphony the Beethoven.
In the performing arts, his most visible achievement remains the dramatization of Requiem by Mozart signed by Romeo Castellucci at the 2019 Aix-en-Provence Festivallater seen in Valencia and Barcelona. “It was a decisive experience because of the physicality that Castellucci gives to the choir and because of the breadth of his vision,” he recalls.
Taking stock of two decades of experience, Pichon introduces a reflection of context. “What has changed the most is the world around us,” he points out, alluding to the recent controversy starring Timothée Chalamet. “I thank you for forcing us to defend classical music and remember its transformative power. But to do so we must maintain contact with the public.” And he concludes with a precise image: “Music is an antidote. And we must make it contagious.”