Poétesses symphoniques

Album review

The revival of French music by women has proceeded more slowly than in Britain or the U.S., but this release by the Orchestre National de Metz under conductor David Reiland seems likely to change that. The works involved are all engaging, at the very least. All are by composers who also worked in smaller forms; it is especially valuable to have performances of their orchestral works, and A Little Summer Suite by Betsy Jolas here receives its world premiere. The first three works come from the transition from late Romanticism to the modern era. The symphonic poem Andromède by Augusta Holmès will please those who wish Wagner had written more orchestral music, and the Femmes de légende of Mel Bonis are compact and evocative pieces, more general portraits with Eastern-style elements than programmatic tone poems, depicting Cleopatra, Shakespeare's Ophelia, and the biblical Salomé. The two pieces by Lili Boulanger, edgily modern-impressionist tone poems of a spring morning and a sad evening, are probably the best-known pieces here, but even these do not appear on symphonic programs as often as they should. The best, however, is saved for last: A Little Summer Suite was composed in 2016 by the then 90-year-old Betsy Jolas, who, as of 2023, was still at it. Serially organized but loosely modeled on Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, it consists of brief movements depicting a summer walker strolling from one scene to another. The "Strolling Away," "Strolling About," "Strolling Under," and "Strolling Home" movements represent permutations of the basic material. Jolas calls herself the last survivor of the Boulez-Stockhausen generation, and those composers would certainly be delighted by this charming work. This is a valuable release of great general interest.

© James Manheim /TiVo