Benjamin Frankel

Benjamin 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 …..

Rob Barnett @ musicweb-international.com

Benjamin Frankel (1906-73) was a British composer best known for his film scores, but that is only one aspect of his output. Here are two symphonies, very impressive compositions which make use of atonal / serial techniques yet have clear themes and melodies, transparent scoring, and a direct emotional appeal. They are both strongly atmospheric, reflecting perhaps Frankel's skills as a film composer. The 2nd is a formidable, aggressively bleak work, suggestive of some sort of prolonged crisis. At times it threatens ……

Dante Alighieri, born in Florence in 1265, was at once a poet and an important political figure of his time. His celebrated Divine Comedy relates his supposed descent to Hell and slow ascent to Paradise. Godard’s operatic treatment of his life (1890) skilfully juxtaposes the political milieu – crowd scenes in Florence and the quarrel between Guelfs and Ghibellines – with the expression of the courtly love he feels for Beatrice, betrothed to his friend Bardi.

The Symphony No. 10 has a heartfelt Hymnus framed by a stunningly violent first movement and an equally riled war dance of a third movement. In fact that third movement had me thinking of Grainger's revolutionary ballet The Warriors. The first movement Ein Sturm is not quite as onomatopoeic as the similar works by Nystroem and Sibelius - both inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest. The Henze movement was not related to Shakespeare. All the music here is freely dissonant yet not fragmented. Henze holds true to the ‘long line’ in his thinking and expression.
The Montpellier orchestra know the music well for they give a virtuoso performance …….

Rob Barnett @ musicweb-international.com