David / Flemish Radio Choir / Roth Christophe Colomb CD

Each volume in the 'Portraits' series is devoted to a French composer who has now largely been forgotten. With performances by many talentes artists, it presents a panorama of his works. The 'Portrait' of F?licien David aims to complement the discography already available with world premiere recordings of the composer's works. Among these are a glimpse of his orchestral output, with the Symphony no. 3 and the Overture to his op?ra-comique La Perle du Br?sil, the work that really launched David on his operatic career. But it is above all Christophe Colomb (1847) that deserves mention, for this ode-symphonie with speaker was an ambitious follow-up to the success of Le D?sert, performed at the Th??tre-Italien some years earlier. Nevertheless, this anthology does not forget that F?licien David was also a figure of the salons, admired for his intimate music and especially his songs. The programme therefore offers a chance to discover excerpts from the M?lodies orientales for solo piano, a selection of romances in the style of the 1840s, and the very rare early motets for chorus in varied scorings. The culmination of this Portrait is the restoration of Le Jugement dernier, which was intended as the concluding apotheosis of the opera Herculanum, but was finally deleted and has never been published until today.