I'm going to begin by praising the CPO label and its musicians. Rather than simply cranking out umpteen, mostly unneeded recordings of canon repertoire performances, they do the gritty work of promoting obscure/forgotten fare that we probably wouldn't otherwise hear. This is important if you're a fan of classical music, not only due to the outside possibility of embracing new favorites, but also because it allows us to see the historical landscape in better relief. You don't really understand why canon composers are canon composers until you've heard a whole host of lesser figures imitate them in their own music. At the same time, you don't really appreciate the neglected masterpieces one occasionally encounters until you've waded through truckloads of perfectly respectable but unremarkable compositions. Labels like CPO, Naxos, Chandos, Hyperion, and others give us this chance. And they're to be warmly commended for it.
So what are the odds that you're going to take one or more symphonic poems by Augusta Holmès to your bosom, or even remember them 10 minutes after you've finished listening? Unless you're one of the Politics People™ (more on this in a bit), the answer is a firm "not favorable." Look, these are nice pieces, well scored and soundly constructed. But there is not a distinctive measure across them. They're squarely Imitation Wagner. By the time you've made it through the three-movement Roland Furieux, you've practically exhausted Holmès's toolkit of stock phrases and mannerisms. Such is the experience from there on out. If that weren't enough, more-specific-sounding "borrowings" may suffice: the Tannhäuser knock-off to start Pologne, the Das Rheingold Rhine River motives occasionally heard in Roland, and the fanfare to conclude Irlande that is ripped straight from the conclusion to Tristan und Isolde's first act, to take a few examples. Actually Irlande is probably the best of these works, if only because Holmès's quotation of the traditional Irish tune "Let Erin Remember" provides stronger flavor than do any of her own materials.
If the above sounds unduly negative, I must emphasize I'm glad to have had the opportunity to listen to this music. It deserves to be performed, heard, and discussed. At least occasionally. BUT, it doesn't deserve these things more than do overtures/symphonic poems by Draeseke, d'Indy, Macfarren, or MacDowell, for example. Yet it likely will receive more such exposure, and I think we all know why. While I condole over the difficulties that individuals from under-represented groups faced in the past (and in some cases still face), I don't fancy the drawbacks of some well-meaning efforts to hear their music and tell their stories. I can agree that the circumstances of Augusta Holmès's life make her a sympathetic figure. But that's a musically neutral consideration. When I listen to a piece of music, I am not listening to biography or life circumstances. It's too bad that the genders/life circumstances of figures like Balakirev and Bax mitigate against their more distinguished (yet almost equally neglected) symphonic poems ever earning the favor of Holmès's modest ones. Yet much of the favor will be synthetic in her case, and in this sense we prolong the dishonor that she and others were forced endure while they lived.
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