​"Poetesses Symphoniques"

This is another rather hard-to-find release, appearing on a label I’ve never heard of, la dolce volta. Similar to the Paris Polonais disc I recently reviewed, this one seems to be available only sporadically on CD, and more readily as a digital download. Either way, it is worth seeking out. (I managed to get a CD from Amazon just before they updated their listing to "currently unavailable".)  

As the title indicates, this is a collection of French symphonic poems by female composers. It is an interesting program, with 61 minutes of unjustly neglected music, superbly played and recorded.
 
Not everything here can be considered a true masterpiece of course, but there is some wonderful music along the way. And it’s perhaps unfortunate (and unfair) that the only living composer of the bunch, Betsy Jolas, is given top billing on this production, as I found her piece the least substantive and musically creative among them. But I’ll get to that momentarily.
 
Let’s begin with Wagner. Oops - I mean Augusta Holmes. The brass opening of her Andromeda sounds for all the world like Mahler, and even more like Franck (her teacher), with unmistakable hints of The Accursed Huntsman, written the same year (1882). But the piece overwhelmingly sounds like Wagner. Not only musically (and in orchestration), but also length - it goes on for nearly 15 minutes. It is pleasant and bursting with big, Romantic melodic lines - richly orchestrated. But the entire piece sounds curiously, persistently familiar - almost like deja vu. Not that that’s bad, it’s just not terribly individual or distinctive. But I enjoyed every minute of it.
 
Jump ahead 30+ years, and Lili Boulanger takes us from Wagner to the soundworld of Debussy. Her music is more delicate, more transparently scored, more harmonically exploratory, and more, well, Impressionistic.
 
The first of its two sections, “On A Spring Morning”, is refreshing after the grandiose Holmes which precedes it. Full of color, it conjures up the shimmering glow of dawn sprinkled with the anticipation of a new day - sounding ever so much like Debussy's La Mer. “On a Sad Evening” is sad, yes, but permeated by a palpable sense of doom. The 24-year-old Boulanger was well aware of her terminal illness (tuberculous) as she composed this, and that realization can be felt in the very essence of the music. (She died later that year, 1918, just 10 days before Debussy.)
 
If this music sounds familiar, that’s probably because these two pieces were originally written for Piano Trio and have been recorded several times - most recently by the Neave Trio on Chandos. The orchestrated version has also been recorded before - by JoAnn Falletta in 1992 for Koch - although, curiously, she reverses the usual order of them, starting with Sad and closing with Spring.
 
Next up are 3 symphonic poems by Mel (Melanie) Bonis. These were originally piano works based upon legendary females, but never published in her lifetime. They were orchestrated while she was studying with Charles Koechlin in 1908-09. (There was a 4th one, "Omphale", which they never finished). ​

These are seductive - colorful and heady. "Cleopatre" occasionally brings to mind Richard Strauss and Szymanowski, flavored with the glittering orchestration of Rimsky-Korsakov. "Ophelie" is all Rimsky - the dramatic brooding of Le Coq d'or; while "Salome" is spirited and sensuous, with glimmers of Scheherazade. I wish someone had taken the initiative to have the 4th piano piece orchestrated, as I didn't want this to end.  

Despite (or because of) their evocation of the rich orchestrations of Rimsky-Korsakov, these three by Bonis are arguably the highlights of the entire disc - expertly crafted, musically engaging and superbly orchestrated. 
 
As a matter of fact, all three of these composers are brilliant at orchestration, which is probably the most salient characteristic of their music. It is brought vividly to life here by conductor David Reiland and the wonderful Orchestre National de Metz Grand Est (in Northeast France), aided by sumptuous recorded sound.
 
Finally we get to the "main attraction" of this program, the new work by Betsy Jolas. It was commissioned in 2016 by the Berlin Philharmonic after a meeting with its then conductor, Simon Rattle. Jolas explains in the booklet that the work is an homage to one of her favorite composers, Mussorgsky, and his Pictures at an Exhibition specifically. And similar to that famous work, it has short sections (just 3 of them) separated by little “strolling” interludes. But they are not based on a recurring theme and thus don’t hold the piece together like Mussorgsky does. And the three primary sections (“Knocks and clocks”, “Shakes and quakes”, “Chants and cheers”) are more clever than they are substantive, and are simply too short to make any kind of lasting impression. (Although the final section, which to my ear resembles neither chants or cheers, is somewhat reminiscent of Dutilleux, which roused my interest somewhat.) The entire piece lasts just 12 minutes and I wish there were more to it. Jolas obviously has talent, and the concept is novel. If only she had developed these sections into something more (and definitely added a few more of them), this piece might have been more of a success. As it is, I found it slightly amateurish and not much more than a curiosity.
 
As to the production - on first glance, it is impressive. It comes in a thick, hardback book with a sleeve at the back for the CD. But with the extravagance of the sheer size of it, the booklet itself (in French and an English translation) is rather unwieldy and unorganized; and for all the pages it occupies, is surprisingly meager with in-depth information about the music or the composers.
 
Let me describe what we’ve got here.
 
The English section begins with a 2-page printed translation of a poem by Augusta Holmes (Andromeda). There is no introduction to it or any reference to how it relates to the music on the program. It just … appears. Immediately following it, there is a commentary about the importance of knowing if a piece of music is written by a woman or a man and whether that knowledge influences our enjoyment of it. That narrative quickly makes an abrupt segue to the origins of "program music" in French symphonic poems. These seem to be just random thoughts expressed without coherence or context.
 
Eventually they get to brief descriptions of the music and composers pertinent to this recording, followed by a little interview with Betsy Jolas (consisting of 3 succinct questions about her commission etc.). Then the booklet goes back to short summaries of the composers again - but just 3 of the 4 of them (and in a different order from how they were discussed earlier). And nothing more about Jolas. How odd. The final pages contain some random photos of the recording session, and close with info about the conductor, the orchestra, and production details.
 
Fortunately, the recorded sound is excellent and the playing of the orchestra is superb. And there is some glorious music here, much of it musically rewarding - and remarkable, considering it is written by women, merely for the fact of its relative neglect. And in response to the question posed in the booklet about gender, no, that did not influence or affect my appreciation, understanding or enjoyment of this music. I considered this program based solely on its musical merit. 
 
Finally, it's interesting to compare this collection of mostly rare French orchestral music to a similar 2-CD set I reviewed earlier this year, Aux Etoiles, which offers considerably more of it. Two selections are duplicated: the shorter, happier of Boulanger’s pair (“Spring”), and one from Bonis's trilogy, “Cleopatra”. In both, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider in the earlier set adopts broader tempos than does Reiland. And in general, Znaider tends to bring out the symphonic grandness in all of the music on his set, while Reiland elicits more life, characterization and sparkle from his orchestra - and receives consistently superior recorded sound as well. Both collections are invaluable, but if I had to choose just one, it would be this later, single disc collection.