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?