Félicien César David: Le Désert

Felicien David (Composer), Guido Maria Guida (Conductor), Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra), Bruno Lazzaretti (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Bruno Lazzaretti
• Orchestra: Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
• Conductor: Guido Maria Guida
• Composer: Felicien David
• Audio CD (April 28, 2009)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Capriccio
• ASIN: B001TY54I4
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #321,929 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Fanfare, Alan Swanson, Nov/Dec 2009

Félicien César David (1810-1876) is not a name one often comes across on concert programs or recordings, but in his day he was well enough known to rate an obituary in the New York Times. There are a couple of recordings of Henri Vieuxtemps's arrangement for viola and piano of the "Hymn to the night" from the second part of this "Ode-symphonie," a few songs, mostly on a disc of forgotten Mediterranean music, and that's about it. Though he has a long list of songs and choruses, other symphonic work, and some chamber music as well, he may be best known for his fourth, and most successful, of seven stage pieces, Lalla-Roukh (1862), whose story by Thomas Moore was popular with many composers of the period.

David was not the only one in his day besotted by Oriental exoticism. It was all the rage from the time of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt on. David traveled to the Middle East in the early 1830s, and was permanently smitten. Le désert is perhaps the best of his many responses to Middle-Eastern culture. Apart from its exotic moments--the muezzin's call in the third part is often claimed to be the first Muslim music heard in Western Europe, despite not being particularly Islamic--its ability to suggest the vast spaces of the desert and to give one sense of its peoples made it a powerful contribution to the increasingly popular genre of the orchestral tone poem before the term arrived. It's not difficult to see why Berlioz proclaimed him a new great composer after its premiere in 1844.

David's chief gift was his ability to exploit orchestral color, and we hear that at once in the first section, a fine evocation of the desert, using broad ostinato orchestral basses to suggest the vast silence, over which come various colorful moments, such as the arrival of a caravan. The second movement depicts the desert at night, a much more lively time of day. The third movement portrays morning and the passing of the caravan. Though it shouldn't, it may surprise some to hear God addressed by the chorus in this piece as Allah.

The orchestra in this 1989 recording plays very well indeed, and Guida knows what this piece needs to make it work. The Speaker is French, and if I say that I hear an odd accent in his voice, I admit I cannot immediately identify it. Tenor Lazzaretti is, frankly, underpowered, and recorded fairly far back on the stage, and the chorus is simply woefully uneven and unsubtle. This is a shame because, as music, this piece has a lot going for it and, despite a certain resemblance of the third movement to the first, I think this would be a good work to restore to the choral-orchestral repertoire. The booklet has Auguste Colin's original French text and a German translation only.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An attractive work in a very fine performance, February 13, 2010

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G.D. (Norway) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Félicien César David: Le Désert (Audio CD)

This is in many ways an important (re)release. Félicien César David (1810-1876) was a rather central figure in his day, apparently the one who introduced the then-popular (and later thoroughly unpopular) exoticism into French romanticism. His music is flowingly romantic, sometimes reminiscent of Berlioz and Verdi, but also pointing forward to Massenet and Gounod - in fact, if I were to sum it up, `midway between Berlioz and Massenet' seems apt, even though he lacks Berlioz's striking originality and drama and doesn't quite anticipate Massenet's lush tunefulness.

Le Désert is a dramatic symphony, or `Ode Symphonie' for speaker, solo tenor, male chorus and orchestra, and was written in 1844 (which makes it rather modern-sounding for its date of composition). The program depicts the tribulations and travails of a caravan journeying through the desert, in the first part from the calm, chilly dawn in Sahara (where it appears from afar in the manner of Borodin's Steppes of Central Asia) through a storm and to the calmly noble resumption of the journey. The second part, depicting a night in the desert, is colorful and mostly reflective with some rather seductive orientalist atmosphere. The third part opens with music of the dawn and an effective chant du Muezzin before the caravan resumes its journey disappearing into the distance. It closes with a grand, Beethoven-like finale.

It is not a masterpiece, and the themes aren't really strikingly memorable, but it is a well-crafted work, finely scored, atmospheric and colorful enough to sustain interest throughout. Lazzaretti sings the tenor part with conviction and he is backed by fine choral singing and orchestral playing. It all adds up to a pretty strong case for this attractive work, and the recording is good. All in all, I am very glad to have heard this one, and it should certainly appeal to everyone who thinks the description `mixture of Berlioz and Massenet, perhaps some Lalo and Gounod thrown in' sounds attractive. Very welcome, if not an essential release.