McAlister Matheson Music June 2015
And the Bridge is Love
This is a disc of many firsts and one unfortunate last – Julian Lloyd Webber’s final recording as a cellist before his retirement from playing due to a neck injury that affected his bowing arm. However, this disc also marks his first recording as a conductor.
He and the English Chamber Orchestra have chosen to explore some of the glorious highways and byways of English string music, the former being represented by deft, full-blooded accounts of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro for Strings and Serenade for Strings. However, it is the lesser-known pieces that make this disc so attractive. Elgar’s Chanson de nuit and Chanson de matin are presented as world premiere recordings in orchestrations for strings by Elgar’s close friend W H Reed, the LSO’s distinguished leader from 1912 until 1935. So too is the exquisite Sospiri (Sighs), a short work for strings, harp and harmonium that Elgar dedicated to Reed.
Another first is William Lloyd Webber’s touching 1950 arrangement of his song The Moon, unperformed until 2014. The disc takes its title from Howard Goodall’s 2008 work for solo cello and strings, composed in memory of a teenage cellist friend who died tragically in 2007 and rooted firmly in the yearning, melodic English string-writing tradition. Arrangements by Fenby (of Delius’s Two Aquarelles), Vaughan Williams, Walton and Ireland round off a worthwhile project.
Anne McAlister
