Strings Magazine June 13th 2011
Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber’s 60th Birthday Gala
Public event was a celebration of a ‘beautiful, temperamental instrument’
Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber’s 60th birthday gala at London’s Royal Festival Hall on April 14 was a celebration of the “beautiful, temperamental instrument” (his words) that dominates his life. It was also a reminder of his remarkable versatility—he shared the stage with his wife, the cellist Jiaxin Cheng; and his composer brother, Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber; violinist Tasmin Little; soprano Danielle de Niese; jazz singer Dame Cleo Laine; and the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Christopher Warren-Green.
Notwithstanding a heartfelt performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto, Lloyd Webber was keen to look ahead rather than to bask in past glories, which is why he ended the program playing alongside schoolchildren drawn from the In Harmony project that he chairs. It also explains the inclusion of the premiere of a work written specially for him: Eric Whitacre’s The River Cam for cello and strings, which the American composer also conducted.
“It’s just a little postcard [of the countryside near the English university city of Cambridge, where he spent the fall of 2010 as a Visiting Professor and Composer in Residence],” Whitacre told the orchestra during rehearsal.
Unnecessary modesty: the wistful beauty of this ten-minute work charmed audience and players alike.
After the piece had come together for the first time, Lloyd Webber was heard to exclaim, “I’m stunned.”
Andrew Palmer
