Seven years younger than Berlioz, Félicien David (1810-1876) may be almost forgotten now, but was a far more successful composer than his great contemporary. David composed a number of operas (including Lalla Roukh, a recording of which was released last year on Naxos) but it was with his choral ode-symphonie Le Désert, first performed in 1844, that he achieved his greatest fame. The work, which draws on David’s own travels through north Africa and the Middle East in the 1830s, is not a narrative so much as a series of three descriptive musical tableaux, which depict a caravan travelling through the desert, its night-time stopover and sunrise the following day. Berlioz greatly admired the work and even conducted it, and his own Roméo et Juliette and Lélio, the sequel to the Symphonie Fantastique, are certainly among its antecedents. Laurence Equilbey and her choir, Accentus, perform the score twice here – both with the spoken narration, delivered by the actor Jean-Marie Winling, and without it, when the piece does seem more coherent and compact. In either, though, there is more than enough striking music to make it worthwhile.
