Secrets of the Sahara - Le Désert and L'Atlantide

Secrets of the Sahara !  Two magnificent evocations of the Sahara and its seductive mysteries : Félicien David's Le Désert (1844) an ode-symphonique, and Jacques Feyder's film L'Atlantide (1921).  Both are long term favourites, but the soundtrack in the restored version of the movie is pretty banal, so I muted and played Félicien David's Le désert instead.  The combination worked extremely well !

Perhaps it's because the rhythms of Le désert so strongly resemble the rhythms of a caravan of camels marching single file through the desert. Scored for narrator, orchestra, tenor and choir, the piece unfolds at a steady pace, unhurried yet purposeful.  For thousands of years, caravans like these have crossed the desert : it is as if  the endless sand dunes (depicted by the strings) defy Time itself ; the tracks of the caravan erased as soon as the caravan has passed.  David lived in Eygpt from 1833-35 so the atmospheric exoticism feels drawn from lived experience. Le désert  was sensationally successful in its time, and was to influence the whole genre of French orientalism. If it isn't as well known today, other than to fans of the genre, this might be because it doesn't fit modern ideas of form. David wrote operas, but Le désert is neither opera nor conventional concert piece and requires fairly large forces which make it relatively tricky to programme. In David's time, this form was relatively common (think Berlioz) so it needs to be appreciated as such.  This means performances of a vey high and idiomatic standard.

David's depiction of the sound of Arabic/North African music aligns to sounds very different from the western tonal scale.  The role of narrator is fundamental, holding the piece together and giving it shape.  Dawns rise and nighgt descends : As darkness falls,  the tenor sings the exquisite "O Nuit!"(Hymne à la nuit), suggesting the night sky with boundless horizons. This song is a tour deforce for a very high tenor or countertenor in the tradition of Grand Opéra. By far the best recording to get is the one with Cyrille Dubois and Zachary Wilder, tenors; Jean-Marie Winling, speaker; Accentus, Orchestre de chambre de Paris, conducted by Laurence Equilbey from 2015.  The few copies left on the market retail over £50 so if you have it already, treasure it and accept no imitations.  Dubois's timbre is unique. His voice soars to stratospheric heights, then swoops downwards while remaining elegant. "Le chant du muezzin" resembles the call of a muezzin, carrying over great distances, calling the faithful to mark the start of a new day. Another reminder of the vast distances of the desert, and of the timelessness of experience. 

Eighty years forward to Jaques Feyder's film L'Atlantide,  innovative on many levels.  This, too was innovative, shot on location in Algeria in the desert, employing Algerians in major supporting roles and dozens of locally-recruited extras . No fake blacking up, and earnings for local people. the difference between French colonialism and other forms of colonialism, including Hollywood could not be more pointed.  The sand dunes themselves provide an underlying narrative, which no set of the time could imitate.  The scenery is authentic, too,  showing native villages as they were at the time, and spectacular mountain cliffs.  Even the indoor scenes were assembled on site, using regional textiles like carpets, combined with stylized designs reminiscent of the fashion for "primitive" alien cultures, that made the Ballets Russe so popular. To audiences in 1921, this must have been a revelation to people who weren't used to seeing foreign places in such deatail, or, indeed, to moving images.  L'Atlantide became a box office hit, also starting a trend for films set in exotic places, like The Sheik (1926) with Rudolph Valentino, and Pabst's 1932 remake of L'Atlantide starring Brigitte Helm, both made with assumptions that western values went unquestioned.

Like David's Le désert, Feyder's L'Atlantide employs cyclic narrative. A Frenchman (Lt Saint-Avit) is found wandering in the desert, maddened by thirst and bizarre visions.  Only towards the end do we realise  he's telling his tale back to front. Back to the beginning : he's invalided back to France under a cloud.  suspected of being involved with the mystery disappearance of his friend and mentor, Captain Morhange. Two years previously, a French expedition had been massacred  and the leader Lieutenant Massard had been captured.  Morhange and Saint-Avit approached the desolate mountains of Tidefest, taking shelter in a cave at the approach of sandstorm. Inside, they found insciptions in early Greek with the name "Antinea". Danger lurks. Their faithful guide is poisoned and they turn to a Tarqui from Haggar, Cegheir ben Cheik who suddenly appears, to lead them deeper into the caves below the mountains. Cegheir ben Cheik intoxicates them with hashish. He's smoking Lt. Massard's pipe.  The Frenchmen are catured and taken to the palace of Ahaggar. Both men are bathed, massaged and treated well but they don't know where they are, or why.  In the place’s archive, they meet a librarian who tells them that they are in the centre of Atlantis, ruled by Altinea, descendent of the first Atlanteans. He takes them to a tred marble room filled with solid gold sacrophagi and pins a name on the latest arrival "Lt. Massard", whom Morhange had seen jumping to his death. These are the husbands of Altinea, who die, insane, when she rejects them.  Only one has ever escaped and he made his way back, unable to break the spell. 

Altinea wants Morhange but he will not be seduced. Altinea is like a wild animal, slithering like a serpent, eyes always alert to her prey.  Those palpitations might have seemed erotic in a more buttoned up era, but to modern eyes, they're overacted. still, she must have titilliated the audiences  of 1921 who thought vamp was sexy. Why doesn't Morhange respond ? In France, he had decided to take holy orders as a monk, but the Abbott told him to return to Algeria first, to test his destiny. Hence the crucifix and beads (not a rosary) he wears, which is not standard uniform. To get revenge, she feeds Saint-Evit narcotic cigarettes and gets him to smash Morhange's skull with a silver hammer. Yet Morhange forgives him, as Christ did.  The original novel, by Pierre Benoit, would have appealed to audiences brought up on Catholic morality. Rejection makes Altinea mad with grief: she sees crucifixes shining everywhere and lets Morhange be buried according to his own religion.   Luckily for Saint-Avit, he's been befriended by Tanit-Zerga, Altinea's assistant, who wants to escape and return to her home  in Gao, from which she was taken in a raid by slavers. She arranges a camel, and the two make a plucky escape, aided by Cegheir ben Cheik.  In the desrt, though, their camel dies, and when they reach a well, it's dried out. Tanit-Zerga dies, with a mirage of Gao in her mind. Thus we return to the beginning, when Saint-Avit was found, lost in the desert.  But, like Morhange and others before him, the spell of Altinea haunts him, and he wrangles a posting back to the desert, knowing full well that he is compelled by some unknown, irrational force. 

Eclectic Gamelan Debussy and Boulez - François-Xavier Roth, Paris

François-Xavier Roth was today awarded the Legion d'Honneur for his services to culture. Congratulations, and well deserved cheers !  Yesterday afternoon, he conducted another brilliantly eclectic programme with Les Siècles, at the Philharmonie de Paris screened live,  bringing out the connections between Javanese gamelan, Debussy and Pierre Boulez.  Unusual, but extremely rewarding, so please  make time to listen (archived on arte.tv and also on the Philharmonie de Paris website) because this concert has been put together with insight and great musical understanding. The roots of modern music lie deep in the past, and in forms beyond the western European core.

The photo at right shows some of the Javanese dancers who appeared at the Exposition Universelle of 1889, a world's fair celebrating modern progress.  Europe was looking outwards, inspired by exotic, alien cultures.. A "new" baroque age, in many ways, full of confidence and adventure.  France,  Belgium and the Netherlands had colonies in Asia and Africa,  and while they weren't any better as rulers than some, they were genuinely fascinated by the diversity and richness of the cultures they encountered.  Debussy visited the Indonesian pavilion, which featured large replica village, so authentic that the buildings were constructed by genuine Javanese builders, using materials they brought with them. For entertainment, there was a large gamelan orchestra, and troupes of dancers, not only Javanese but Balinese and Sumatran.  Debussy responded to their music as a musician would, not for the exoticism so much as for the ideas on pitch, intervals and structure. 

And so this concert at the Philharmonie began with the Ensemble de Gamelan Sekar-Wangi, sounds building up so gradually that some in the audience didn't realize the show had started.  Unlike western music, a lot of Asian music is ambient sound, part of ordinary life, so you listen in different ways.  This performance included two singers, their lines weaving semi independently of the orchestral line, creating multiple layers of sound.  Gamelan performance is intuitive and semi-improvised, the performers adapting to one another.  The music moves as if in procession, the different components, co-operating, changes marked by gradual, mutually agreed changes of direction. Think ricefields, terraced up sloping hills, teeming with water, bugs and fish, harvested and re-irrigated. a lot of Asian music has spiritual and ritual connections, so this awareness of space does matter.  

Eventually, like Debussy, Messiaen and Benjamin Britten would respond to Asian music in their own terms.  One day I hope Roth will conduct Britten's Prince of the Pagodas.  That's a piece that really cries out for someone who understands how the music works, and why.  Please read my analysis of it HERE.  In 1950's Britain,  it was misunderstood, not helped by awkward choreography.  Some years ago there was a much better Japanese production, but its full potential has yet to be tapped.  Go for it, François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles, and use modern dance.  The time for a really good Prince of the Pagodas has come ! 

 With the last echoes of the gamelan began Boulez Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna, the artillery of orchestral gongs taking up from the gongs of the gamelan and the beaten metal bonang.  Boulez writes for  eight unequal instrumental groups, moving at different paces and in rhythms,  just as mourners follow a cortege, seemingly disparate but with common purpose. In the Philharmonie, the differences are emphasized by having the groups playing in different positions around the main stage.  Wooden, beaten percussion - shades of the gamelan xylophone - functions like a heartbeat, often harshly hollow.  Sudden  interruptions, flurries, changes and pauses that feel organic, like a brave heart that's failing but rallying despite the odds.  Brass and wind chords blare, radiating out into space, as if exploring distance and searching the unknown.  The piece is a funeral march, of course, but also serves to structure time and its inevitable passing.  Thus the small trickling sounds, tick, tick, tick against the strong brass crescendi.  Cymbal crashes echo, the winds and brass wail, once more, in unison, the  sounds lingering after the act of playing has ceased. which is part of mreaning - Maderna is dead, but not forgotten, and neither, now is Boulez.  

After Boulez, Debussy Three Nocturnes and La Mer, again connecting old and new. Last Thursday Roth conducted the Nocturnes at the Barbican, London, with the London Symphony Orchestra. Please read what I wrote about that, and its modernism, here.  With Les Siècles and Les Cris de Paris at the Philharmonie de Paris, the Nocturnes sounded even more refined and sophisticated, sensitive as this orchestra is to the finest nuances of timbre.  a very different sound, but exquisite.  My imagination blossomed, thinking back to Asia and dreams of new horizons.  Two very different Nocturnes in four days - what a treat !   Roth will be conducting La Mer with the LSO in a few weeks.  He's done it numerous times but it never hurts to hear it again, and again.  For an encore  the fanfare that concludes Debussy's Première Suite d'Orchestre premiered in its new performing edition by Les Siècles in 2012.  Please read about that HERE.   

Sabine Devieilhe Mirages - exotic French orientalism

Mirages : visions of the exotic East, a selection of French opera arias and songs from Sabine Devieilhe, with Alexandre Tharaud and Les Siècles conducted by François-Xavier Roth, new from Erato.  A stunning Ou va la jeune hindou (Bell song) from Delibes Lakmé.  Devielhe's agile coloratura negotiates the challenges so gracefully that they seem almost effortless, flowing as fluidly as molten silver. The decorations sparkle - like bells - evoking emotions an innocent virgin cannot otherwise articulate. Lines float with a legato which seems inexhaustible, and dance with sensual rhythm.  The natural freshness in Devieilhe's voice  evokes Lakmé's purity without artifice. If Devieilhe is still quite young, that adds tender fragility to her portrayal. Listen also to the way the orchestra replicates exotic "oriental" sounds with western instruments. Les Siècles' background in period-inspired performance pays off handsomely.  Also included here are a good Viens, Malika (with Marianne Crebassa)  and Tu m'as donné le plus doux rêve. 

Celle qui vient est plus belle from Massenet Thaïs, and A vos jeux, mes amis from Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet, indicating whee Devieilhe's career will develop.  Berlioz La Mort d'Ophélie , Debussy La Romance d'Ariel and Charles Koechlin's Le Voyage show she's also promising in song, where Devieilhe is accompanied by Alexandre Tharaud.  But  there are  other treasures, too.  One of the many reasons why Roth and Les Siècles are so extraordinary is because they know their music history and make intelligent, perceptive connections.  Thus they present, together,  La jour sous le soleil béni from Messager's Madame Chrysanthėme, a French Madama Butterfly with Mes longs cheveaux descendent from Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande, a thoughtful juxtaposition which brings out the contrast between two almost contemporary pieces.   

Still further reason to get this recording is that it includes Maurice Delage's Quatre Poėmes hindous.  Delage (1879-1961)  travelled  to India, Indo-China and Japan, absorbing non-western musical form.  Although there are several recordings of these songs, most aren't easy to come by except for Felicity Lott/Armin Jordan from 1995, so it's refreshing to hear Devieilhe with Roth and Les Siècles who are even more idiomatic than Jordan and the Kammerensemble de Paris.  What gives this performance the edge is the orchestral playing.  Les Siècles, with their extensive experience in Ravel and in unusual instruments, create the exotic sounds  of the East of Delage's imagination so well that the songs have an almost authentic "Indian" flavour, even the one titled Lahore which is in fact a setting of Heinrich Heine's Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam, also set by Grieg, Liszt,  Delius and Stenhammer.  In Delage's setting, cello, viola and harp are plucked like Indian string instruments, while the voice curls sensuously around. In the song Bénarès, we might think we hear tablas and Indian reeds, but we're actually hearing western instruments played by musicians who have endeavoured to understand what their Asian counterparts might do.  When western composwers discovered Asia, they opened new possibilities in western form.  From The East to Debiussy, to Stravinsky (whose Le Rossignol is also on this disc.  Modern and ancient, in symbiosis.  With Roth and Les Siècles: "The unexpected is always with us", to borrow a phrase from Luciano Berio, another Roth speciality. .

Antony and Cleopatra, Schmitt : Oramo BBCSO

Florent Schmitt's Antony and Cleopatra (Suites no 1 and 2, Op 69, 1920)  with Sakari Oramo conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with movements re-ordered and interspersed with excerpts from Shakespeare, adapted by Bill Barclay of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, at the Barbican Hall, London.

Lurid colours lit the stage, saturated washes of red and gold. Aquamarine lights shone on the platform floor, spotlights glowed on the sheets the musicians were playing from. The music was equally lurid, beginning with a wildly exuberant fanfare  Not a military display so much as statecraft as theatre. Perhaps Cleopatra, like many rulers since, knew you can dazzle others even if you don't have much in the way of firepower.  So spoke Enobarbus, describing Cleopatra to his fellow Romans : 

"The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
 Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold "

No wonder Ida Rubinstein - another  extravagant diva - wanted to portray her and asked André Gide to create a spectacular showcase. Stravinsky was asked to provide the incidental music since he, Diaghilev and Rubinstein had worked together since the early days of the Ballets Russe, For various reasons he demurred.  Florent Schmitt's Antony and Cleopatra quotes so explicitly from The Rite of Spring that one wonders what Stravinsky might have thought, particularly as the angular "primitivism" of the Rite is overlaid with elaborate decorative ornamentation.  Barely seven years before, the Rite of Spring had scandalized Paris, causing a near riot. In Schmitt's Antony and Cleopatra, the fierce chords depict the Battle of Actium so graphically that you can almost visualize ships battling on the open ocean.  Swashbuckling stuff!  Consider Erich Korngold's infinitely more original Die  tote Stadt which also premiered in 1920, with great success, pretty much inventing a new musical genre.   In the 1920's movies were silent, but spectacular. Consider Jacques Feyder's L'Atlantide (1921) where the Queen of Atlantis lives in North Africa. But what we now call film music had its roots in popular music for the stage. Exoticism is a theme that has such deep roots in the French aesthetic that its influences are felt far beyond specifically exotic subjects.
Japonisme shaped Debussy : Africa shaped Picasso.

Orientalism in France has a long pedigree, dating back to Napoleon's campaigns in Egypt , bearing fruit in an enduring fascination with different exotic locales, which manifested itself in painting, literature and music.  Berlioz La mort de Cléopatre, and Les Troyens, Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, Délibes Lakmé. Massenet Le roi de Lahore, and the songs of Maurce Delage and Jaubert.  Ida Rubinstein's Cleopatra was part of a huge surge of public interest in things Egyptian which influenced fashion, decorative arts and popular culture, which still prevails today. The French Shakespeare tradition goes back to Charles Kemble, and carried no cultural baggage. Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette, for example, is very much an original work, not a setting of the play Thus Rubinstein's Cleopatra, via Gide, is part of a much wider cultural theme.


This Antony and Cleopatra was part of a year-long celebration of Shakespeare all over Britain. Hence the high-profile production, with the BBC SO, the flagship of the BBC stable of orchestras.  Schmitt probably doesn't get luxury performances like this too often. Sakari Oramo conducted with panache, he and his orchestra clearly enjoying the big brass effects and theatricality. At one point, the actors "spoke" to Oramo, who is noted for his good-natured geniality. He beamed and acknowledged them without missing a beat. 

"Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that The winds were lovesick with them. The oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes"

The actors were Janie Dee (Cleopatra), Simon Paisley Day (Antony), Brendan O'Hea , Cassie Layton and Tom Kanji. The Director was Iqbal Khan.  Shakepeare's Globe isn't Stratford but earthier.  there's not much you can do about staging at the Barbican,  but then Shakespeare's own productions seem to have been closer to Greek ideas than to Hollywood.  The concert was recorded for broadcast at a later date, but I'm glad I saw it live.