Les 1001 Nuits, or 1001 Nights, basically serves as a general marker of the Arab and South Asian content of these songs, which have only a tangential relationship with the tales of the collection that goes by that name (or by "Arabian Nights"). The songs are settings of mostly contemporary poems on what used to be known as Oriental themes, and the composers are all of 20th century European origin; the least known of the group, Francesco Santoliquido, was an Italian who lived in Tunisia. Algerian-born soprano Amel Brahim-Djelloul is a powerhouse of a singer, and she has uncovered some intriguing material here. The most interesting set of songs may be by
Karol Szymanowski, a Pole setting texts in German about, among other things, a muezzin, or deliverer of the Islamic call to prayer, who happens to be hopelessly in love. The musical line of the call to prayer is woven into lines that do not have the Arab inflection, describing the muezzin's beloved. The other highlight comes at the end, in the Quatre poèmes hindous (1914) of Maurice Delage, composed in India (and not necessarily Hindu in theme; one is about the birthplace of the Buddha), with each song bearing the name of the city where it originated. These are not so much Indian in style as sparse and rather mystical; they're unlike anything else of the period. The sets of songs by Santoliquido and Louis Aubert are less distinctive but give Djelloul's voice plenty of stretches at the top of her range, and she doesn't falter. The accompaniment by pianist
Anne Le Bozec is sympathetic and well attuned to the subtleties of the musical language. This is unusual repertoire, of a sort that's almost forgotten by now but that would have been quite familiar 75 or 100 years ago. The Three Persian Songs of Santoliquido here receive their European recorded premieres.