The Guardian 26th April 1983
DELIUS. Cello Concerto. HOLST. Invocation.
From the cellist Lloyd Webber comes a most attractive coupling of rarities for cello and orchestra, Delius’s wayward, seamlessly lyrical concerto as well as works by Holst and Vaughan Williams that for a generation and more had been totally forgotten (RCA US 9010): Holst’s Invocation for cello and orchestra has its echoes of Wagner, Strauss and Elgar, but equally it looks forward to the Planets. Its beauty is sensuous with no hint of Holst the ascetic. Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Sussex Folk Times by contrast, written in 1930 for Casals, is not quite the conventional pot-pourri you expect with its occasional spiky hints of Job and the Fourth Symphony and its downbeat ending.
Lloyd Webber, superbly supported by Vernon Handley and the Philharmonia Orchestra, plays with just the warmth needed, not just here but in the Delius. Nearly 20 years ago this was the first concerto ever recorded by Jacqueline du Pre playing with teenage intensity but with the sound of her cello made thin. Now Lloyd Webber and Handley present a more richly idiomatic view with the surprise of the Alle-gramente last section brought out the more.
Edward Greenfield
