Benjamin Frankel was a late developer, and the first years of his maturity were also those in which he spent much of his time writing film music. His major concert works of the period were mostly chamber pieces- it was only in the last dozen or so years of his life that he had the leisure to write the eight symphonies on which the recent rediscovery of him (high time, 20 years after his death) has concentrated. He seems to have found his individual voice with the striking Violin Concerto of 1951. With one exception the works in this collection are earlier than that, and not on the same level as the symphonies and concertos, but it is hard to dismiss even the very early and quite uncharacteristic Three Sketches as juvenile: they are brief, light but polished essays in a neo-classical idiom that sounds at times like Warlock, at others like Hindemith on holiday, and they are expertly written for string orchestra. The title of Solemn Speech and Discussion describes it precisely: a melody of impressive gravity is proposed, alternative or contradictory ideas are then set against it. The discussion is a little too full, but it earns its almost nobilmente conclusion—and its one-line quotation from The Internationale. We recall that Frankel was a member of the Communist Party until 1951, and perhaps expect the worst of a suite called Youth Music. In fact it's charming: engaging witty, with a simple but affecting threnody as its slow movement and a Big Tune in the finale that positively cries out to be sung.
Don't be put off The Aftermath by Robert Nichols's dreadful poems (five movements of self-dramatizing gloom: ''O I am worn smoother than any pebble on the beach! I would dissolve to that whence I was born'', followed by one of unconvincing resolve: ''I count mere life-breath nothing now I know Life's worth lies all in spending! that known, love Life and Earth''), nor by the engaging but immature-sounding voice of the soloist. They are odd, these songs: very simple, sometimes no more than a recitative with a bare accompaniment, but they rise at times to a spare eloquence, and they are among the sources of the distilled economy of Frankel's mature style. The Concertante Lirico is the only work here in which that style appears undiluted. Again very simple material (a piling-up of common chords, a gracious waltz-theme) is resourcefully worked but not over-worked. One expects its ten minutes to add up to a pleasant lyrical sketch, but it is a genuinely symphonic movement, and an accomplished one.
The recordings are excellent, but the performances a touch careful; once or twice I thought the tempos chosen were on the slow side. The solo trumpet in The Aftermath is not placed off-stage as the score requests.'