Of Irish parentage, Augusta Holmès lived in France throughout her life, adding the grave accent to her surname when she became a French citizen. She was a friend of Franz Liszt and a favourite pupil of César Franck, who channelled his feelings for her into his stormy piano quintet. Alhough until very recently her music had been almost entirely forgotten, in her lifetime she was regarded highly enough to have been commissioned to compose an Ode Triomphale for more than 1,000 performers to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution. Her output included four operas (only one of which has been staged), more than 100 songs and cantatas, and a series of symphonic poems, four of which are conducted by Michael Francis on this disc.

Completed in 1876, Holmès’s Roland Furieux is a compact three-movement symphony, based upon Ariosti’s Orlando Furioso. Irlande and Pologne, from 1882 and 1883 respectively, were declarations of solidarity with the oppressed peoples of Ireland and Poland; while Andromède, completed in 1899, four years before her death, is based upon the story of Andromeda as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. All four scores are heavily influenced by Wagner; the music is earnestly motivic, the scoring always on the denser, darker side, though other performances might bring more transparency to the textures.

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