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Author: Julian Lloyd Webber

  • Ireland Cello Sonata

    The Strad February 1993

    Beatrice Harrison Memorial Concert – Wigmore Hall

    Julian Lloyd Webber (cello)

    Another English memorial took place on 9 December in a packed Wigmore Hall – Julian Lloyd Webber’s tribute to Beatrice Harrison.

    Elgar’s biographer, Jerrold Northrop Moore, one of the few people still alive today who heard Beatrice play, gave an interesting address, describing Lloyd Webber as an inheritor of her style: ‘One wasn’t aware of fingers and wood – only of the music itself.’ Having heard Harrison on disc, it may be hard to view the self-effacing Webber as a descendant, but, leaving aside the glissandi and rubato of her time, he is certainly capable of revealing the music itself in an unusual way: in his performance of the Adagio from Elgar’s Concerto he exposed the structure in all its remarkable transparency and simplicity. Particularly striking was the Delius Sonata, a rhapsodic work which Webber managed to anchor, playing with unfailing beauty but not a trace of indulgence. His note on the Ireland Sonata, linking it with the novels of Arthur Machen, who wrote of ‘that strange borderland, lying somewhere between dreams and death’, threw a powerful if ominous new light over the work, and he found his most eloquent moments in the sustained, mauve-coloured phrases on D and G strings. Enormously enjoyable was Cyril Scott’s virtuosic Pastoral and Reel, for which Margaret Harrison was welcomed affectionately on stage to help John Lenehan with the accompaniment. Bridge’s Scherzetto is an encore Harrison herself would have played, and Webber attacked it with alacrity, showing that his English heritage isn’t just serious, beautiful and unsentimental.

    HELEN WALLACE

  • Ireland Cello Sonata

    Gramophone February 1993

    Stanford, Bridge, Ireland

    “Lloyd Webber and McCabe give what seems to me an ideal performance, for they pursue it with great flair, imagination and strength. I recommend this disc unreservedly.”

    Alan Sanders

  • Ireland Cello Sonata

    BBC Music Magazine January 1993

    British Cello Music Vol.2 CD

    Put simply, this is just marvellous cello playing. Julian Lloyd Webber joins forces again with the pianist John McCabe to produce a second volume of British music for cello and piano. This disc includes three world premiere recordings, two works by Frank Bridge and the wholly remarkable Second Cello Sonata in D minor by Stanford. Written in 1893, Stanford’s three-movement sonata could almost stand as the third cello sonata that Brahms never wrote. The expansiveness of the music draws passionate but beautiful playing from Lloyd Webber, lyrical at the top of the register but also particulalry resonant at the bottom. Bridge’s Elegy is wistful rather than tragic like Faure’s sombre Elegie.

    The surprise on this disc is Bridge’s Scherzetto, written in 1902. Lloyd Webber discovered it in the library of the Royal College of Music while still a student there, giving its first performance in only 1979. It is a brilliant, virtuoso work full of skittish zest which Lloyd Webber controls impressively; a perfect piece for an encore.

    Ireland’s Sonata written in 1923 is more conventional, but receives a highly committed performance from Lloyd Webber and the admirably neat-fingured John McCabe.

    Annette Morreau

  • Ireland Cello Sonata

    The Daily Telegraph 20th November 1980

    Julian Lloyd Webber

    Eric Parkin

    Webber Recital

    IT IS some time since London has had an opportunity to hear a programme of works for cello and piano by four of our most distinguished composers, performed with such authenticity and technical perfection as was the case at Wigmore Hall last night.

    In Ireland’s Sonata in G minor (1923) Julian Lloyd Webber and Eric Parkin displayed instrumental mastery in projecting the strong and eloquent themes. A wonderful effect was achieved by Mr Parkin’s sustained and satisfying line in the haunting principal theme of the slow movement following on from Mr Lloyd Webber’s incisive opening. This finale had an unusual strength, drive and attack from both players.

    A similar sense of purpose marked their handling of the long crescendo in Bridge’s Elegie (1911) and in his arresting Scherzetto (c. 1902), recently discovered at the Royal College of Music and a first London performance. Delius’s rarely heard Sonata. (1916) brought Eric Fenby on to the platform. This imaginative pianist, who was the composer’s amanuensis from 1928 until his death, provided a close yet independent partnership with Mr Lloyd Webber’s rich tone. On his own in Britten’s Suite, Mr Lloyd Webber, who incidentally performed the very testing programme without musuc, showed how mature his art has become.

    D.A.W.M.

  • Ireland Cello Sonata

    The Guardian 11th November 1980

    WIGMORE HALL

    Edward Greenfield

    Webber Recital

    NO MORE dedicated advocate of English cello music has emerged in recent years than Julian Lloyd-Webber, and it was good to find him attracting a large audience for what a few years ago might have seemed a very specialised programme of Ireland, Delius, Bridge and Britten.

    True, it was Britten’s Third Cello Suite for solo cello which at the end of the programme conveyed a degree of concentration in the argument largely missing till then. One might have expected that in his third essay in this inevitably restricted form Britten’s inspiration would have contracted, but Lloyd-Webber if anything more than the dedicatee, Rostropovich, proves the opposite with eight movements, jewelled in their compression, leading to the culminating passacaglia and epilogue.

    As a splendid start to the programme came the G minor Cello Sonata of John Ireland with Eric Parkin, long dedicated to the music of this composer, matching Lloyd Webber in responding to the taut, neurasthenic side of the composer as well as the relaxed warmth of the all-too-brief central slow movement.

    For Delius’s elusive Cello Sonata the doyen of Delians, to whose toils we actually owe the last works, Eric Fenby, added his unique authority. Alas, unlike the Double Concerto written about the same time, it is a work which meanders even in a performance as persuasive as this.

  • Ireland Cello Sonata

    The Financial Times 20th November 1980

    Julian Lloyd Webber

    Along the road to celebrity, Julian Lloyd Webber has found the space and time to make a speciality of English cello music of the first half of the 20th century. The niche suits his generous tone and unabashed phrasing well; the sonatas by Ireland and Delius that made up the first half of his recital at the Wigmore Hall last night require the most committed advocacy to cohere and sustain attention.

    But sumptuousness may not be all. Mr. Lloyd Webber played both sonatas superbly, yet gave us in the process a surfeit of lyrical effusion. Placed so uncomfortably close in a programme, Ireland and Deblius can seem to mimic each other’s failing: a tendency to uncontrolled soliloquy in one, a want of rhythmic firmness in the other. Ireland’s sonata may be one of most powerful pieces, unerringly thematic with a fine slow movement and splendid transition to the blustering finale (both showing Mr. Lloyd Webber at his best), but it lacks definition. In structure it hangs together more obviously than Delius’s sinigle-movement sonata, but given (as here) a sure hand with the modulations of mood and temper the Delius feigns more cogency, more finality.

    The pianist for the Ireland sonata and for two short pieces by Bridge was Eric Parkin, dependable and confident, but for the Delius Mr. Lloyd Webber was joined by Eric Fenby, a pleasant, unspectacular tribute to Delius’s amanuensis. Mr. Fenby handled the predominantly chordal accompaniment to the sonata most sensitively, and was surely impressed by the scope and intelligence of the cello playing.

    by Andrew Clements

  • Ireland Cello Sonata

    The Times 20th November 1980

    WIGMORE HALL

    Webber Recital

    Lloyd Webber/ Parkin/Fenby

    Ken Russell’s film A Sons of Summer has recently been largely responsible for bringing to wider notice the name of Eric Fenby, the young composer who spent six years as amanuensis to the , blind and paralysed Delius. But long ago Fenby’s own published account of the episode, as well as his constant devotion to Delius’s music an enthusiasm he encourages in others through his teaching, writing and performances have brought him well-earned recognition in musical circles. And last night’s recital showed that at a sprightly 74, Fenby still remains Delius’s most faithful champion.

    Together with Julian Lloyd Webber he gave a glowing account of the Cello Sonata, a work’ he claims is much misunderstood by performers. Here we were shown that its melodies can be strong and muscular as well as broad and flowing; phrases were turned tidily, shaded subtly, and an overriding continuity of thought seemed to shape the whole.

    For the rest of the programme Julian Lloyd Webber was joined by Eric Parkin, a partnership that proved equally successful. John Ireland’s Cello Sonata plumbs the depths of both instruments, and both players responded with a warmth and sensibility that confirmed a special affinity with Ireland’s style.

    Both the Ireland sonata and the youthful Frank Bridge pieces that followed were approahed in a positive way that is all too rare in this sort of music. Phrasing was broad and long-breathed but never overstretched; hushed chromatic harmonies lingered but never outstayed their welcome. These were convincing and assured performances.

    Mr Lloyd Webber remained undaunted by Britten’s third unaccompanied Cello Suite, written for Rostropovich in 1971. The haunting Russian tunes that form its basis were given in sombre, almost funereal tones, with a folklike simplicity that contrasted well with the more manical technical exploits, where Mr Lloyd Webber impressed us in a more artful way.

    Judith Nagley

  • d’Indy Lied for cello and orchestra

    The Daily Telegraph 22nd March 1991

    CLASSICAL

    Saint-Saens:Cello Concerto; Allegro appassionato.

    Honegger Cello Concerto.

    Faure:Elegie.

    D’indy: Lied. Honegger Julian Lloyd Webber/ English Chamber Orchestra. Yan Pascal Tortelier (Philips 432084-2)

    Julian Lloyd Webber’s bold start to Saint-Saens’s A minor Cello Concerto similarly finds the essence of urgency in the music right away, going on to develop a mature bloom of sound in passages of quiet, lyrical yearning.

    And the “Allegro appassionato” makes a marvellous ending to his all-French disc: as if it were an encore, this is a delightful, rhythmically spicy, gypsy-inflected confection lasting only a few moments, but one in which Lloyd Webber encapsulates all its fire and ardent swooning.

    In between, he plays the perennial Faure “Elegie” with an endearing freshness of grief-laden emotion, tastefully judged, unintrusive in its expression, and in the “Lied” by Vincent d’lndy the unadorned melodic beauty (with lovely touches of orchestration) is spun out with affecting simplicity.

    Honegger’s Cello Concerto is a welcome and uncommon inclusion here. Its languorous, almost seductive opening is by no means an accurate guide as to what is to follow, for at times Honegger abruptly punctuates the flow with something altogether more angular.

    The music’s strange switches of mood from a quasi-nightclubby lilt to aggressive outbursts hint at dark undertones which the buoyant final section does not wholly dispel. Lloyd Webber is a persuasive, probing protagonist.

    Geoffrey Norris

  • Herbert Cello Concerto No.2

    The Los Angeles Daily News March 13th 1987

    Sullivan’s only concerto a classic

    SULLIVAN: CELLO CONCERTO IN D

    HERBERT: CELLO CONCERTO NO. 2

    ELGAR: ROMANCE

    Julian Lloyd Webber, Sir Charles Mackerras, London Symphony Orchestra.

    Our rating: B

    Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and) wrote but one concerto, but we’ve had to wait until now to hear a recording of it (Angel CDC 47622, CD). And even this performance hinges on a lucky break that the man who last conducted it (Mackerras in 1953) had a memory so photographic, he was able to reconstruct the orchestral parts that were destroyed in a 1964 fire.

    It’s a delightful find, too, particularly the bucolic third movement with its lengthy, effortlessly flowing outbreaks of perpetual motion for the cellist. It might not be top-drawer Sullivan, with only the faintest pre-echoes of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, but it could easily carve out a place in the too-small cello repertory – and Webber plays it with warmth and affection.

    Webber – whose brother Andrew is the massively popular musicals composer also essays a cello transcription of Elgar’s sentimental but pleasant “Romance” that lay unknown until 1985, as well as the sometimes brooding, conventionally Romantic but not-too-sweet concerto by Victor Herbert. The whole CD is quite a programming coup; two attractive cello concertos by composers whom almost everyone thought were exclusively welded to the stage.

    RICHARD S. GINELL

  • Grainger Youthful Rapture

    Penguin CD Guide 2001

    English Idyll

    ‘English idyll’ (with ASMF, Neville Marriner):

    VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Romanza. ELGAR: Romance in D min.. Op. 62; Une idylle, Op. 4/1.

    Discs: 2 Pieces for cello and chamber orchestra. GRAINGER: Youthful rapture; Brigg Fair (arrangement).

    DYSON: Fantasy. IRELAND: The holy boy. WALFORD DAVIES: Solemn melody.

    Holst: Invocation, Op. 19/2. Cyril Scott: Pastoral and reel.

    The highlights of Julian Lloyd Webber’s programme of English concertante miniatures are the Holst Invocation, with its nocturnal mood sensitively caught, and George Dyson’s Fantasy, where the playing readily captures Christopher Palmer’s description: ‘exquisitely summery and sunny — its chattering moto perpetuo evokes images of bees and butterflies’. Grainger’s passionate Youthful raptlure is given just the right degree of ardent espressivo, as are Delius’s warmly flowing Caprice and Elegy, written (during the composer’s last Fenby period) for Beatrice Harrison.

    The two transcriptions, Vaughan Williams’s Romanza (originally part of the Tuba concerto) and the Elgar Romance, conceived with the bassoon in mind, were both arranged for the cello by their respective composers and are effective enough in their string formats, although by no means superseding the originals. However, Lloyd Webber gives the full romantic treatment both to John Ireland’s simple tone-picture, The holy boy, and to Grainger’s arrangement of Brigg Fair, to which not all will respond. For the closing Cyril Scoff Pastoral and reel (with its telling drone effect) he returns to a more direct style, with pleasing results. Sympathetic accompaniments and warm, atmospheric recording.