Even if Augusta Holmes has left no great mark on the history of music in general, in the ranks of women musicians she occupies an honoured place. Born in 1847 of Irish parents (though it was rumoured that Alfred de Vigny, her godfather, was her real father) but living all her life in Paris, she was an excellent pianist and gifted singer: her beauty turned the heads of many, including Saint-Saens, her teacher Cesar Franck—whose emotional involvement with her is reflected in his Piano Quintet—and famous painters and poets who frequented her salon (she bore Catulle Mendes several children). Many obstacles, however, were put in her way as a composer, where, unlike many of her female contemporaries, she was drawn to the larger forms—symphonic and operatic—and despite anti-feminist prejudice enjoyed some signal successes, such as with a Triumphal ode given with 1,200 performers at the 1889 Paris Exhibition.
All the works on this disc date from the 1880s except the unpublished Ouverture pour une comedie (which nevertheless seems to have been performed) from the previous decade. That was before she began studying with Franck; and despite the skilful and colourful scoring (particularly in the delicate opening), there are evident weaknesses in construction and in the variable quality of the material. A notable advance is heard in the three symphonic poems of 1882-3. There is nothing in the least 'feminine' (if one may use that word in these politically correct times) about the challenge flung out by the brass at the start of Andromede or the heroically energetic thrust that follows it—which seem to depict Perseus rather than the unhappy legendary heroine of the title, who is represented musically, in broad lyrical phrases, only in the closing section of the work. Its one weakness is an over-use of the Franckian trick of repeating short phrases successively a tone higher each time.
The same device is still more in evidence in Irlande, a fervent plea for political freedom, a cause with which she was much associated (her father was a noted Fenian). It begins, in original fashion, with a long melancholy clarinet solo: there is some local colour, with a hearty jig, but most striking is Holmes's ability to spin long, lyrical lines: it culminates in a menacing uprising and a triumphant quotation of Let Erin remember. Pologne, after sections in national rhythms, contains a graphic battle scene (or is it, as suggested in the excellent note, a musical representation of a picture, The Warsaw massacres?) and ends in a mood of lofty aspiration. One can scarcely complain if an interlude entitled ''La nuit et l'amour'' from a grandiose symphonic ode is soupily romantic.
On the whole, Holmes's slightly younger contemporary Dame Ethel Smyth was not far out, if a trifle ungenerous, in describing her as ''evidently not among the giants, but... knew how to cut a gem''. The Rhineland-Pfalz orchestra does her proud, with wholeheartedly committed playing, and the recording, made by the Sudwestfunk, is first-rate.'