Benjamin FRANKEL (1906-1973)
Symphony No. 7 (1970)
Symphony No. 8 (1971)
Overture to a Ceremony (1971)
A Shakespeare Overture (1956)
Queensland SO/Werner Andreas
Albert
rec ABC Studio 420, Australia, April 1999
CPO 999 243-2
[70.27]
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recommendations
CPO are no shirkers. Their projects evolve slowly but they do happen and
they happen with the closest approach to certainty we get in the classical
recording marketplace. Their Korngold, Krenek, Milhaud, Pfitzner and Siegfried
Wagner cycles are the clearest evidence of their serious intent. Almost
surreptitiously, and without fanfare, they have built a catalogue that is
as unique as the very style-sheet that proclaims itself from each CPO cover.
The process shows no sign of relenting and we can, for instance, look forward
to the continuing unrolling of the Atterberg and Macfarren cycles.
This is the final disc to complete the intégrale of Frankel's eight
symphonies. Knowing CPO it will not be that long (perhaps late 2002) before
a Frankel symphony box is issued - a prospect unthinkable ten years ago.
This is not the last we will hear of single Frankel discs either. There is
due to be at least one film music anthology à la Chandos (Bliss,
Alwyn, Arnold, Auric, Rawsthorne) as well as talk of the recording of his
opera Marching Song - probably taken from the BBC's 1980s relay.
The disc is fully populated with music - playing for over seventy minutes.
It has the strength of including two overtures and two symphonies. Of the
two symphonies the Seventh stands with the steely Fourth as Frankel's most
sturdily impressive works.
Frankel's music, if you have not encountered it before, is atonally lyrical
- Berg rather than Schoenberg. His violin concerto (also on CPO) is among
the finest works of the century and can easily stand compare with the Berg
and the Schuman. The film music, of which there are many scores (most of
which will have to be reconstructed by the hopefully indefatigable Dmitri
Kennaway), are fibrous British film music of the 1950s and 1960s in which
Frankel marginally softens his pallet for cinema audiences. Interesting that
Elizabeth Lutyens made money from using her avant-garde style for horror
films. Frankel's concert and chamber works (CPO have the complete string
quartets) are ominous, lyrical, threatening, gloomy, charged with the uncertain
catastrophic spirit of the times. These various works achieved as much neglect
as William Alwyn's (another British film music composer whose true metier
lay in the symphony); the difference being that Alwyn used his film music
money to fund recordings. The picture might have been different if Frankel
had invested his royalty income in a sequence of Lyrita LPs.
The Overture to a Ceremony, might from its title, be expected
to latch onto the 'pomp and circumstance' of works like the concert overtures
of Chagrin, Leigh, Reizenstein and Howard Ferguson. In fact Frankel does
little to soften the serial blow. The music is portentous, projects the usual
long Bergian lyricism, and in its fractured dramatics, recalls Nielsen 4
and 5. From 15 years earlier comes the Shakespeare Overture
which is marginally more relaxed still - resounding with some filial
relationship with Walton's Olivier films. With this I noticed, at 5.29, a
long march pointing back towards Frank Bridge's masterwork Enter Spring.
All ends care-freed at 9.30.
The Symphonies are the final pair in the cycle. Frankel was to have written
a Ninth for the BBC Proms but this never came to anything. The
Eighth, might almost be a 'concerto for orchestra'. There is some
well calculated and very beautiful music for the tuba pp against strings
in the first movement (track 7 8.15). Havergal Brian's stuttering termagant
marches are also suggested and, in the final movement, (6.20) William Alwyn's
funereal spirit, most evident in the Hydrotaphia symphony, is there
for all to hear. Still this is not easily assimilable music. Be warned -
you will need to persist. This warning is far less relevant in the case of
the Seventh. Frankel seems, for this work, to weave a poem for silvery
violins, for romantic horn solos (Dennis Brain would have made great play
with the solo in the first movement), with seemingly endless lyrical lines,
of a Bergian caste, with the singing of malcontented souls and with the fife
and drum satire of Arnold's Eighth Symphony.
A very positive disc, extremely thoroughly documented, as is the standard
for this series and indeed this, together with the disc containing number
4, is the disc with which to start your Frankel symphony collection. If you
have never heard any Frankel before then start with the violin concerto.
Further details from me if required.
Rob Barnett
Visit the Frankel
website
