The Irish Times 10th May 1988
Rachmaninov Cello Sonata
Julian Lloyd Webber in the NCH
JULIAN Lloyd Webber, nobly playing with two damaged thumbs, gave this enormous recital at the National Concert Hall on Saturday in aid of the Adelaide Diabetic Research Fund. For several reasons it was one of the most important cello recitals to have been played in Dublin in recent years. Although he appears quite frequently here, Lloyd Webber was giving us the first real chance to hear him in these big works with his mag-nificent ‘Barjansky’ Stradivarius of 1684.
Heretofore in my experience he has had a relatively small sound, but he now has an instrument of wonderful warmth, vigour and personality which is capable of voicing the heavy demands he puts on it in complex works like the Debussy sonata. It was a joy to me to witness this beautiful partnership between artist and instrument which, supported by the committed accompaniment of Peter Pettinger, found its way, albeit with difficult music, into the hearts of an unfamiliar audience.
Having said that, I do not think, on the evidence of his over-romanticised Bach, that I would like to hear him in an all-Bach programme. He is firmly, and admirably, at home in the modern repertoire, where he is both searching out the many strands of the com poser’s identity and pursuing the essential melodic lines.
He demonstrated this in one of his encores, the Bridge ‘Scherzetto’ of 1901 which he himself discovered and premiered in the seventies. In the Faure to which he laid claim as a considerable work (and where his romanticisation was completely convincing) he played not simply ‘like’ a master put as a master. But the triumph of the evening was in the true partnership be tween piano and cello of the Rachmaninov. Here both players showed a sincerity, an immediacy, an elegance and, in Lloyd Webber’s case, a boyish charm, which raised my enjoyment of this gem of the repertoire to new heights.
By Richard Pine
