The Independent on Sunday 6th October 1996
Julian Lloyd Webber plays Delius
Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons Festival
Golden Moment of the Week came in the unlikely context of Raymond Blanc’s still, sadly, token music festival at the Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons near Oxford. It opened on Tuesday with Julian Lloyd Webber and John Lenehan playing bits and pieces calculated to spoil no one’s appetite. But in the middle of them came a glorious reading of Delius’s single-movement Cello Sonata followed by a jewel-like Nocturne that could almost have passed for Ravel but was in fact an exquisite miniature by William (pere) Lloyd Webber. Delivered from the heart but with an unaffected dignity it was the most purely pleasurable cello-playing I’ve heard in ages.
Michael White
