As part of the Philharmonie de Paris’s now well-established “Chœurs” series—rich in repertoire and featuring top-tier performers—the Vox Naturæ concert, led by Léo Warynski and his Métaboles, deserves special attention, both for the music it presents and for the quality one has come to expect from these exceptional musicians. An interview.
This premiere lies at the heart of the artistic endeavor that began in 2010 when Léo Warynski founded his vocal ensemble. There are too many to count the composers whom Les Métaboles have championed with talent since their inception, and this performance—designed for the main hall of the Cité de la Musique—also serves as a reminder that theater—or at least dramaturgy—became woven into the complex textures they create quite early on. But music comes first: “The project was born from a musical idea. I love Murray Schafer’s music, and for me, among 21st-century composers—particularly those writing vocal music—he is one of the most fascinating, because his scores treat the voice in a rather novel way, with beautiful notation that is extremely intelligent. A score by Murray Schafer is already, in and of itself, a work of art, a true painting. I sincerely hope that it will be celebrated, and our role, with Les Métaboles, is precisely to showcase scores that are less familiar to the public and to help them discover them.
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It takes all the (much-celebrated) talent of Léo Warynski’s singers to do justice to the dizzying diversity of works that all share the ability to conceal formidable technical skill behind the beauty of their textures. This ability to shift from one tone to another, from one language to another, is part of the ensemble’s very DNA: “There’s a sense of challenge when you join Les Métaboles. I don’t want to hold back on anything, actually, and I always tip my hat to my singers. They know that with me, they’ll perform a work by Luigi Nono, a new piece by Yann Robin, a piece by Arvo Pärt, and then, from time to time, Allegri’s Miserere or Domenico Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater.
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"I sincerely hope that it will be celebrated, and our role, with Les Métaboles, is precisely to showcase scores that are less familiar to the public and to help them discover them."