The Violin Concerto
Following the Violin Concerto of 1951, it was to be seven years before Frankel again composed for large forces: the demands on his time, of a seemingly endless succession of film-score commissions, meant that he was not as free as he wished, to devote himself to serious output. He worked on two, large-scale, symphonies which he left unfinished and was more productive, in chamber music, producing the lovely Piano Quartet, Op. 26 (1953) and the memorable Clarinet Quintet, Op. 28 (1956). In 1957, he emigrated to Switzerland, largely in search of the peace and seclusion he felt essential, if he were to develop further in his concert works. It was not easy for him simply to say No to the countless film directors and producers he had worked with through many years, (most of whom had become good friends), as long as he remained in Britain: in absentia, no excuse was really necessary. But there were also financial considerations: Frankel had earned very well in his commercial work - it was rumoured that he was the highest-paid British composer in the field, at the time - yet, income tax was at punitive levels and matters were not helped by the composer’s mishandling of his finances. He never saved, never invested, was generous to a fault and enjoyed the good life. All these factors combined to create the need for a domicile where the burdens of taxation were far less.
Frankel with his beloved dog
If the move failed to provide a permanent solution to the financial difficulties, it nonetheless proved to be crucial in releasing Frankel’s time for his creative work, which can best be illustrated by the following statistics: during the years 1944-58, Frankel composed some seventy film scores but little orchestral music for the concert hall (the Violin Concerto, of course, and a few shortish pieces), writing mainly chamber and instrumental works. However, during the equivalent period of time from 1958 until his death, he wrote only ten feature film scores and twelve television scores but, most significantly, all eight of his symphonies, the Viola Concerto, Serenata concertante and the opera Marching Song (as well as ensemble and chamber works). The conclusion is inescapable: Frankel’s most fecund period of serious work (not to denigrate the serious nature of many of his film scores) was largely - if not totally - enabled by his move abroad. This was not the only aspect to Frankel’s renewal.
The composer c. 1962
During the mid fifties, the composer had studied and discussed serial composition method with Hans Keller, whom he had first befriended at the 1950 Film Music Festival - Maggio Musicale - in Florence. Frankel was a very late convert to serial technique and, indeed, had quite consciously rejected it for many years, demonstrating to his composition class exactly why he felt it did not work. In working with Keller, however, he found his way to a very personal kind of serialism, in which the tonal aspect of music (the sense of key-centres) was not negated but, simply, transformed. This was the technical foundation for nearly all of Frankel’s works from the first symphony onwards (although it was in his score for the 1955 film ‘The Prisoner’ that he made his first experiments with serialism). Stylistically, though, the composer of the Violin Concerto is still to be found in the later works and, as a matter of particular interest, Frankel was able, in his fifth symphony and Viola Concerto, to move effortlessly from non-serial first movements, into serial ones with no discernable change of style.
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