"On-the-job-training" and "steep learning curve" are two phrases of modern parlance that have a special resonance for me, as I look back over the preparation of the material for CPO's recent release "Music for the Movies", devoted to film scores of my late stepfather Benjamin Frankel. As a student at the Royal College of Music, many years ago, I studied piano on the Performer's Course. Sadly, the study of orchestration and composition were not on the curriculum and I recall, with some irony, my consternation when I learned that the second-year theory exam included a paper on the former subject. The problem was solved in the end, not by the introduction of tuition in these areas, but by the discovery that there was an alternative paper which omitted such questions. My knowledge of the orchestra, therefore, (and still requiring much study), is based on listening, studying scores and reading numerous textbooks on the subject.

On 12th February 1998, it will be twenty-five years since the British composer Benjamin Frankel died. Even as this anniversary approaches, so, too, does the completion of the recorded cycle of the composer's eight symphonies on the German label CPO. The recordings, which also include the five String Quartets and complete chamber works for and involving clarinet, are, incredibly, the very first of these works, excepting the fifth String Quartet (briefly available on LP during the late sixties) and the Clarinet Quintet, recorded by its dedicatee Thea King with the Britten Quartet, a few years ago, for Hyperion, and, fortunately, still available. Only the seventh and eighth Symphonies have yet to be released (probably during late 1998) and, by the time this appears in print, the premiere recording of the Violin Concerto, Viola Concerto and Serenata Concertante, should be due for imminent release. All things considered, then, this would seem to be a suitable moment to assess Frankel's current standing, and to exa

Benjamin Frankel's work for the concert hall gained recognition toward the end of the War, with a string of fine chamber works and, in 1951, the Violin Concerto “In memory of the Six Million” who had perished in the Holocaust. His reputation as a serious composer was later affirmed by a series of eight symphonies and an opera, “Marching Song”, from the play by John Whiting, all composed between 1958 and his death in 1973. His concert music during this period combined a late-romantic quality with the twelve-tone (serial) principles laid down by Arnold Schoenberg and his score for the 1960 film “Curse of the Werewolf” is believed to be the first in Britain have been based on upon them. Reputedly, he was the highest paid British composer of film music, during the 1950s.