"The Desert"

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 31, 14 February 1930, Page 5

"The Desert"

To be Heard from Dunedin NE of the items on Monday evening’s entertainment at the new Town Hall in Dunedin will be a symphonic ode, "The Desert," to be sung by the combined male choirs of Dunedin assisted by the Orchestral Society. "The Desert" is a highly remarkable work of its kind. It is on this that the chief fame of the French composer Felicien Cesar David is founded. In it he has embodied the impressions of his life in the East. The ode consists of three parts subdivided into several vocal and orchestral movements, each introduced by some lines of descriptive recitation. The subject is the mighty desert itself, with all its gloom and grandeur. On this background is depicted a caravan in various situations, singing a hymn of fanatic devotion to Allah, battling with the simoon, and resting in the evening by the fountain of the oasis. The vast monotony of the sandy plain, indicated by the reiterated © in the introduction of the opening prayer to Allah, the "Danse des Almees," the chant of the Muezzin, founded on a genuine Arahic melody-are rendered with a great vividness of déscriptive nower,