Salzburg: Der Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber Im Mozarteum. Gabriel Faures Elegie – Julian Lloyd Webber ist ein erzmusikantischer Cellist. Er hat diesem Stück nichts von seinem sentimentalen melodischen Reiz benommen. Aber er ist auch vor allem ein hochintelligenter Cellist. Er hält Faures Elegie eher im Mezzoforte und zeitweise in ganz innigen Piano-Tönen. Reinhard Kriegetum
Julian Lloyd Webber spielt hier ein sinnvoll aufeinander bezogenes Programm ein. Sein Ton besitzt nichts Sonores oder Schweres. Sein Cellospiel prägt eine weiche, aber dabei gesanglich-flexible Timbrierung. Sein interpretatorischer Ansatz kommt besonders dem wunderbaren Cello-konzert von Honegger zugute. Giselher Schubert
Julian Lloyd Webber’s bold start to Saint-Saens’s A minor Cello Concerto finds the essence of urgency in the music right away, going on to develop a mature bloom of sound. He plays the perennial Faure Elegie with an endearing freshness of grief-laden emotion, tastefully judged, unintrusive in its expression. Honegger’s Cello Concerto is a welcome and uncommon inclusion. Lloyd Webber is a persuasive, probing protagonist. Geoffrey Norris
Lloyd-Webber psyched himself up for a wild and woody entry. He ensured that the first movement’s great song was elegantly, lightly breathed, as was his loose-limbed playing in the slow movement, and his admirably fluid accompaniment to the orchestra’s winsome woodwind serenading.
Hilary Finch
Julian Lloyd Webber was 50 yesterday, a fitting moment to pay tribute to an outstanding artist and one of music’s nicest and most approachable of men. He recognises no musical barriers and effortlessly straddles the divide between popular and serious that cuts off so many others from their audience. His next album will be arrangements of his brother’s most memorable melodies. The Elgar Cello Concerto is an award-winning piece, while Softly Awake My Heart from Samson And Delilah sits comfortably alongside the world premiere recording of the Cello Concerto the great Rodrigo himself wrote for Julian in 1982. His outstanding Elgar, with Yehudi Menuhin conducting, is coupled with a particularly fine account of the Dvorak Concerto recorded in Prague with the Czech Philharmonic. DAVID MELLOR
A first-class package in every way. Julian Lloyd Webber has a firm, richly coloured and full-focused tone; moreover it records well. His lyrical warmth projects tellingly over the entire range. His account of the great Dvorak concerto is full of passionate feeling, with a tender Adagio, and Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic give him thoroughly persuasive backing. His performance of the Elgar concerto has the huge advantage of Lord Menuhin as his partner. Lloyd Webber proved that the original uncut version of Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations is superior to the truncated version used in most other recordings. Among the encores the lovely Traumerei stands out for its freely improvisational feeling. Ivan March
I PREFER Julian Lloyd Webber’s Elgar Cello Concerto to Jacqueline Du Pre’s. And you can now get his noble performance without having Menuhin’s anaemic Enigma Variations, because it has been re-issued in a set of cello concertos. I have a soft spot for JLW’s Dvorak Concerto, too, and it is also now in better company than on its original CD. The other main works here are Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations and Saint-Saens’s A minor Concerto. The package also includes shorter works including Faure’s Elegie and Saint-Saens’s Allegro Appassionato and The Swan. Tully Potter
Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber took the stage Friday night and thrilled the audience with his fervent playing and beautiful tone. The featured soloist with the Edmonton Symphony, Lloyd Webber gave an intense performance of one of the crown jewels of the cello repertoire – the Dvorak concerto. The slow second movement, with its heart-melting lyricism, showed Lloyd Webber at his best; playing with a singing, centred tone with the warmth of burnished gold. The cadenza was song-ful rather than virtuosic and displayed the cellist’s musicianship in his sensitive phrasing. Guest conductor Stuart Bedford elicited a warm, rich sound from the orchestra that supported the soloist without overwhelming him.
Julian Lloyd-Webber takes Dvorak’s Cello Concerto to Prague. DVORAK CELLO CONCERTO OP104/CARNIVAL OVERTURE OP921. Julian Lloyd Webber, cello; Czech PO/Vaclav Neumann. Philips 422 387-2. Over the years, Julian Lloyd Webber has come to be associated mainly with twentieth-century repertoire. His recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto under Yehudi Menuhin won Best British Classical Recording of 1986. It was interesting to discover why it had taken so long for him to take on that other great war-horse, the Dvorak Concerto. The characteristic lean, silvery sound of the orchestra’s strings has been perfectly captured. Heroic gestures abound, but so do moments of great subtlety. JV
Julian Lloyd Webber is a passionate advocate of both these composers, and with regular accompanist John Lenehan has a long standing familiarity with each work, and indeed discovered Delius’s Romance in 1976. This early composition from 1896 bears some similarity to the shorter works by Faure for cello and piano, and here was given a sunny countenance and warm tone, its main melody lightly elusive but attractive. The mood was in direct contrast to the Ireland, which initially complemented the rainstorm outside. Lloyd Webber’s tone throughout this was probing in the mid-register, and the high notes were completely secure. Delius’s Caprice and Elegy is from 1930 and is much more concise than the Romance. Lloyd Webber’s cantabile line gave the melody a light touch, and the chromatic Elegy was soft-hearted but profound.
Ben Hogwood