Honegger, Arthur - Le Roi David - Reuss, Daniel

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With 'Le Roi David', written when he was less than 30 years-old, Honegger produced one of his first great masterpieces. The piece has a Stravinskian bite and primitivism, while also revealing Honegger flexing his compositional muscles, even creating an effective Sprechstimme melodrama scene for witch and orchestra. In 27 numbers overflowing with astonishing musical invention, the oratorio brilliantly recreates a distant biblical past in a resolutely modern hybrid of Middle Eastern-influenced music which can sound, to modern ears, like Miklós Rózsa's much later film score to'Ben-Hur'. It enjoyed immediate and lasting popular success.