Under the direction of Léo Warynski, the Les Métaboles choir often lends itself to the game of historical crossovers between repertory works and contemporary music. This is once again the case in this very fine recording, The Angels, which brings together choral works by William Byrd, Henry Purcell and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina with compositions by Jonathan Harvey.

What is it that makes the associations between the music of the 16th and 17th centuries and that of our own time so natural and fruitful? Certainly, the shifting harmonies and formal freedom deployed between the Renaissance and the Baroque, in the conquest of mannered figuralism and expressive dissonance, are in line with some of today's research. Choral writing and vocality, whatever the period and the grammar adopted, inevitably carry the same touching humanity for listeners. Above all, the sacred is timeless by nature, and the choice of works from the past - Byrd's Ave verum corpus , Purcell's Remember not, Lord, our offences and Palestrina's Stabat mater - cannot but resonate with Jonathan Harvey 's (1939-2012) profound quest for spirituality, with which he renewed acquaintance in the 1970s.

After a childhood lulled by Renaissance Anglican polyphony, the young man had for a time distanced himself from religion, advocating a rationalist atheism nourished by science and philosophy. His encounter with Karlheinz Stockhausen, his assiduous reading of Rudolf Steiner, his initiation into Tibetan Buddhism and Vedic meditation, combined with his attentive rediscovery of biblical texts, led him to take this new step, greatly influencing his future compositions. Thus, Harvey's catalog includes numerous sacred choral works, centered on the vocal quintessence of a capella singing, while in many other compositions he makes use of the most advanced computer technologies. Some of these pieces were written for the choir of Winchester Cathedral, where his son sings.

The six works selected for this album were written between 1976 and 2012. Often simple in appearance and entirely at the service of the text, such as the initial psalmody that opens I Love the Lord, they are all of great finesse in writing and testify to a perfect mastery of timbre and balance, certainly due in part to the composer's electroacoustic practice. For example, the opening of Come, Holy Ghost, very close to monodic Gregorian chant, quickly becomes filled with resonant drones, evoking the sound of bells, before developing into a fascinating polyphonic architecture with a double choir. The same is true of Plainsongs for Peace and Light for sixteen solo voices, probably his last work completed on the threshold of death. The Angels, which gives its title to this disc - recorded on September 7, 2019 by Radio France during a concert at the Abbaye de Royaumont - closes it with subtle, mysterious harmonies, in a gentle sway, resting on a double choir. Les Métaboles perform the entire program with the same expressive élan, crystalline clarity and deep resonance, offering a fusional dialogue between past and present.

Guillaume Kosmicki