Musical Times November 1983
Delius Cello Sonata and Cello Concerto with Julian Lloyd Webber
Record Reviews
Delius Cello Sonata; Three Piano Preludes; Polka?Zum Carnival.
Lili Boulanger Piano and Chamber Music. Lloyd Webber, Fenby, Parkin/Parkin, Barry Griffiths, Keith Harvey
Unicorn-Kanchana DKP 9021
The fact that in 1919 the Delius cello sonata shared a recital in Paris with some Lili Boulanger songs is excuse enough for bringing these rarities together. It’s all music of subtle distinction. Fenby introduces the Delius side by reading the account from Delius as I knew him of how he accompanied the cello concerto and sonata after his first night at Grez. One can only echo Delius’s ‘Bravo, Fenby, my boy’, and add similar commendation for Julian Lloyd Webber, who has unusual and masterly control of Delius’s ebb and flow. Eric Parkin is sensitive in the atmospheric preludes but needs a dash more irony for the honky-tonk Polka. The Boulanger pieces range from the Harmonies du soir, a transcription for piano trio of an aria from her Prix de Rome cantata of 1913 (Faust et Helens), to the sombre and acrid threnody, D’un soir triste, from the last year of her short life. The music is economical and taut, sensuously alert but controlled with fastidious judgment. The ‘nature’ titles of most of the seven works belie the cogent seriousness other manner. Nothing is facile, nothing is dull, and her interpreters make an eloquent case for music we should hear more of.
ROBERT ANDERSON
