60th Birthday Concert
ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL, LONDON
July 2011
Julian Lloyd Webber attracted an A-list cast of musical friends to celebrate his 60th birthday with him. As a cellist he has always been equally at home in traditional repertoire and popular music – he was famously featured in the South Bank Show TV signature tune – and here he was at ease with Cleo Laine, whose performance of ‘He was Beautiful’ with Lloyd Webber accompanying wooed the audience.
The cello’s role in education was celebrated with the ‘In Harmony’ children’s project playing Frank Biddulph’s Hot Gold, while cellists from the Royal College of Music performed Klengel’s Hymnus and the Aria from the fifth Bachianas brasileiras by Villa-Lobos. Here soprano Danielle de Niese wove her magic, shortly followed by violinist Tasmin Little and organist Jane Watts in a charming Benedictus by Julian’s father William Lloyd Webber, which glistened with post-Elgarian harmonies.
Nor could a celebration of Julian’s career omit his brother Andrew’s influence, hence The Phantom of the Opera cunningly strolled into the musical fare. A world premiere from Eric Whitacre for cello and orchestra was a welcome present, but the Elgar Cello Concerto partnered by the Phiharmonia Orchestra under Christopher Warren-Green had greater impact: Lloyd Webber performed it with awesome technical élan and a real empathy for the musical idiom.
Joanne Talbot
