In 1977, as preparations were being made for the first Voyager space probe, Carl Sagan approached a number of his colleagues with a question: what music should we send to our intergalactic neighbours? “I would send the entire works of Johann Sebastian Bach,” declared the eminent biologist Lewis Thomas. “Or would that be boasting?”

Bach’s Universe. Photo © Laura Manariti

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra revisits the proposition in an all-JSB program built around the visiting German violinist, Jonas Zschenderlein. “Bach’s Universe” is a brilliantly conceived artifice, superbly executed and a magical foray into the imagination.

The audience enters the Elizabeth Murdoch Hall to a wall of black curtains and darkened stage, a void at the outset of Voyager’s epic journey. A shaft of bright light pierces the darkness, illuminating a single character. Around him a kind of cosmic mist emerges. This ill-defined ‘haze’ recalls moments from movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 2001: A Space Odyssey. But there are no sets or projections or swirling Strauss waltzes. This event is about music, and that unique celestial sound-world of Bach.

Our guide for the journey is Leinad Walker, a recent...