Star rating: ***

Conceived in 1921 as incidental music to a play and revamped in 1922 as a symphonic psalm, Honegger's King David finally became in 1923 what the director of the Edinburgh Festival hailed in Monday night's printed programme as an epic oratorio.

Lasting a little over an hour, and with the bulk of its words spoken by a narrator, it did not, for all its gravity, quite live up to so grand a description. But as the latest of Stephane Deneve's French excavations for the RSNO, it attracted a sizeable audience even if it failed fully to rise to its opportunities as a biblical portrait.

Though it contained touches of Stravinsky, Oedipus Rex it wasn't. There were moments when it brought Faure closer to mind, except that Faure would never have let things grind to a halt quite as often as Honegger did.

Only towards the end, when, after David's death, angel voices were permitted a long, slow build-up, did the music make the most of its possibilities. At this point, seizing his chances, the conductor brought the work to a sustained and sonorous close.

Yet earlier, too, there had been good things, even if the soprano Angela Denoke was indisposed and was replaced at short notice by Geraldine McGreevy. The lamentations of Gilboo and Sylvia Berge's hair-raising incantation of the prophetess were highpoints.

Karen Cargill and Yann Beuron brought focus to their music, and Andrzej Seweryn to his narration, as did the Festival Chorus in its varied contributions. The orchestra's wailing oboe, skirling flutes and a sort of powerful piston-action (evocative of Pacific 231, likewise dating from 1923) were other assets. A bit more of the latter might have made the difference.

Supported by Dunard Fund.