Félicien David: Le Désert

[Mark Thomas]

For many years I've enjoyed the old Capriccio recording of David's delicately perfumed  Le Désert, but it has been comprehensively supplanted in my affections by a new recording of the Ode-symphonie from the Palazzetto Bru Zane foundation. The performances are poetic and nuanced, the recording is in fine modern sound and, coming from the Palazzetto Bru Zane stable, the production and presentation standards are second to none. I write "performances" because the work is presented twice - once with the original spoken dialogue, and the other (as I am no lover of melodrama) blessedly without it. Full details here. Highly recommended.

[FEBCT]

Three CDs of David's chamber music are especially delightful -

1.  Les Quatre Saisons on Laborie - only 16 of David's original 24 works are included, but the music is enchanting;
2.  String Quartets 1,2 & 4 on Naive;
3.  An old, but still wonderful, Marco Polo recording of David's beautiful Piano Trios 2&3.

Lovers of chamber pieces need to hear these.

[jdperdrix]

To complete the previous list of CD's, One called "Le Souvenir" includes the 3rd quartet and the 1st trio. This makes all quartets and all trios to be available. Also worth being listened to is a CD of melodies, by two Greek artists. Believe me, the French prosody is perfect. And "Les Quatres Saisons" contain only 12 out of 24 quintets. Let's hope...

[jdperdrix]

This was originally posted in the Downloads board, which is only for Download posts [Mark]:

Quartet No. 3 is available by the same interprets on a CD published by Laborie called "Souvenirs":
http://www.amazon.com/Souvenir-Felicien-David/dp/B004NQ92D8/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1422519684&sr=1-3&keywords=felicien+david
The same CD also contains trio No. 1 thus making all quartets and all trios available.