Another Look

I fell under the spell of this work written in 1975, a year before the premiere of the opera Einstein on the Beach. It was during this period that Philip Glass began to experiment with this repetitive style which made him one of the most unique composers of his time. I had the feeling, while listening to it, that this work modified our perception of time, abolishing the sensation of duration and plunging us into a state of hypnosis. It is also one of the rare large-scale non-religious pieces written for choir and organ. This singularity immediately aroused my interest and fueled my desire to approach this work with Les Métaboles, first of all through a new recording—of which there are few—which will be released in early 2025, then as part of a stage production created for the 2025-2026 season. Recently, I had the chance to direct several operas by Philip Glass, Einstein on the Beach and Akhnaten, and I could not envisage this choral piece without a stage contribution. Another Look is a radical work which is anchored in references to the music of the past (Gregorian chant and the School of Notre-Dame in particular). This piece was composed at a time when the porosity between the arts was very great, as such, bringing it a plastic dimension is a way of paying homage to this dialogue. This is the reason why I asked the pair Céline Diez and Clément Debailleul, from the company 14:20, so that they develop a plastic and audio-visual proposal constituting a whole with the music and thus participating in questioning the usual format of a concert.

Léo Warynski