Benjamin Frankel - Symphonies Nos. 7 & 8 (Werner Andreas Albert)

Information

Composer: Benjamin Frankel

• (01) Overture to a Ceremony, Op. 51
• (02) Symphony No. 7, Op. 50
• (06) A Shakespeare Overture, Op. 29
• (07) Symphony No. 8, Op. 53

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Werner Andreas Albert, conductor

Date: 2001

Label: cpo

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Review

Frankel’s ingenious last two symphonies are expertly played on this last disc in the series

The years 1957 to ’73‚ the last of Benjamin Frankel’s life‚ were the most productive of ‘serious’ music (his output had earlier been reduced by his need to make a living as a successful and prolific film composer)‚ but from 1959 they were plagued by appalling ill health. Knowing this‚ it is easy to hear his last two symphonies as musical autobiography. The Seventh‚ despite some of its markings – tranquillo‚ piacevole (‘pleasingly’) – and the composer’s own programme­note‚ indeed sounds tense and protesting‚ with much menace and pathos; its end is beautiful but poignant. The Eighth takes up this manner‚ with Shostakovich­like irony and disquiet the first reaction to it‚ but the bell­pervaded Christmas meditation of the third movement and the energetically affirmative finale suggest the now desperately ill composer reacting to his plight with courage‚ even optimism. But the real significance of both works‚ which fascinate and draw one back for repeated hearings‚ is not so much Frankel’s by now famous ‘tonal serialism’ but his extreme ingenuity in deriving strongly contrasting material from very simple elements. At first it is hard to believe‚ but on a second encounter very easy to hear that the entire exuberant finale of the Eighth Symphony is developed from two three­note fragments. This concludes Werner Andreas Albert’s expertly played and reliably recorded survey of Frankel’s symphonies and other orchestral works (the two overtures here are something more than light relief) and I am very grateful for it. There is no hope‚ I suppose‚ of a recording of Frankel’s last work‚ his opera Marching Song?

-- Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-6116/

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2001/July01/Frankel.htm

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Benjamin Frankel (31 January 1906 – 12 February 1973) was a British composer. His best known pieces include a cycle of 5 string quartets, 8 symphonies, and concertos for violin and viola. He was also notable for writing over 100 film scores and working as a big band arranger in the 1930s. During the last 15 years of his life, Frankel also developed his own style of 12-note composition which retained contact with tonality. In the years following his death, Frankel's works were almost completely neglected, until Thea King's landmark recording of the Clarinet Quintet was published, follow by his complete oeuvre on CPO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Frankel

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Werner Andreas Albert (10 January 1935 – 10 November 2019) was a German and Australian conductor. His conducting teacher included Herbert von Karajan and Hans Rosbaud. Albert regularly conducted in Australia and was principal conductor of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra (1983–90). He made over 600 recordings for the Cologne, Bavarian and Northwest German Radio Networks. After recording all of the vast standard repertoire, he began to champion new composers and to research works that had never been recorded. In the process he earned the distinction of the most recorded artist in Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Andreas_Albert

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