Liverpool Echo 13th January 1992
Walton Cello Concerto
WILLIAM LEECE: Philharmonic Hall
REGULAR Phil-goers must reckon they know Elgar’s Enigma Variations so well that nothing in the work can surprise them any longer. But it’ s always nice to be proved wrong and a packed Philharmonic cheered Libor Pesek to the rafters after he conducted Elgar’s old reliable for the first time on Saturday night.
I doubt if anyone In Liverpool had heard the piece played quite so expansively before. Pesek took a brazenly romantic approach from the very first notes, wringing every drop out of the music and encouraging the RLPO to give it everything they had. Above all it worked in the Nimrod variation, with the music slowed right down and the tension and emotion almost unbearable. Pesek has never been afraid to take risks: sometimes he comes unstuck, but more often living dangerously is the way to succeed as the Elgar showed.
In fact the whole of Saturday’s all-English concert was a calculated risk, as Posek was tackling every single work on the programmed for the first time. On top of that, cellist Julian Lloyd-Webber was playing Sir William Walton’s Cello Concerto for only the second time in his career – not that it showed for one moment.
Lloyd-Webber obviously adores the piece, so affectionate and fluent was his performance. But despite his musical eloquence, I remain unconvinced that here is a neglected masterpiece waiting to be taken up by cellists across the world.
At the beginning of the evening came a shimmering account of Sir Michael Tippett’s Fantasia Concertante of a Theme of Corelli which will undoubtedly sounds even better after the orchestra has played it a couple of times on its Canary island tour later this month.
