For their first concert this year, Perth-based early music ensemble HIP Company present rarely heard Baroque works alongside more familiar fare.

Proceedings commence with the familiar: the Overture and Badinerie from JS Bach’s Orchestral Suite BWV 1067. Directed from the harpsichord by James Huntingford and featuring the talents of concertmaster Sarah Papadopoulos and flautist Robin Hillier, these are brisk, lively performances, the small ensemble easily filling the modest acoustic of the small church whilst maintaining a transparent texture.

Nevertheless, I find myself wishing for more rhythmic impetus, more over-dotting in the Overture. It’s all bon goût to excess, if that’s not an oxymoron. I wonder too if the Badinerie is surplus to requirements. But then we would be deprived of yet another example of Hillier’s artistry.

HIP Company: Light of Joy. Photo © Tallulah Chong

Johann Pachelbel’s Easter cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden (P. 58) was published around 1705 and sets the same Martin Luther hymn which JS Bach would use in his arguably better-known BWV 4. Bach’s Pentecost cantata Erwünschtes Freudenlicht (BWV 184) adapts an earlier secular cantata for sacred use; it was...