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Category: Reviews

  • Elgar Cello Concerto

    June 17th 2011

    Orchestra of the Swan, at Birmingham Town Hall

    Orchestra of the Swan’s final concert for this season at Birmingham Town Hall was quite an occasion, with an absolute full house to hear Julian Lloyd Webber, OOTS’ current Associate Artist, play one of his signature works, the Cello Concerto by Elgar.

    Spirits hovered in the air, as the Concerto was part of the first-ever concert given by the CBSO here, Elgar himself conducting, but I think this present performance would have been markedly different from that probably grand rendition.

    Lloyd Webber here shared in what was a heartwarmingly chamber-music collaboration with David Curtis’ orchestra, always alert to what the orchestral musicians were contributing, seamless in unisons, and phrasing with telling delicacy.

    Tempi were bravely reined-back for the soloist’s sometimes hesitant, sometimes reluctant, gloriously beatific utterances. This could have been a mere run-through; soloist, conductor and orchestra ensured that it wasn’t.

    Vaughan Williams’ Wasps Overture, buzzingly alert, and with such noble horns, could perhaps have been balanced more judiciously in its concluding counterpoint, but Brahms’ Second Symphony, some tiny imprecisions of ensemble aside, was a total delight.

    This was a “green” reading of this pastoral symphony, warm, organic in its growth, heroic strings caressing eloquent wind solos. And Curtis’ meticulous rehearsal, on very little time, certainly paid dividends.

    Rating * * * *

    By Christopher Morley

  • Elgar Cello Concerto

    October 1986

    “Ably and sympathetically abetted by Menuhin, this performance combines character and fidelity, being sensitive, mercurial and moving by turns – a really integrated performance to which I will return again and again.”

  • Elgar Cello Concerto

    April 24th 2011

    Julian Lloyd Webber, Anniversary Gala, Royal Festival Hall, London

    *****

    As a postscript to my tribute to Julian Lloyd Webber a fortnight ago, his 60th birthday gala was a joy because of the inspired blend of material, both familiar and unfamiliar.

    Of course, room was found in the first half for Julian’s Elgar Concerto, but then he really let his hair down – and he’s still got a lot of it. There was some Villa-Lobos sexily sung by Danielle de Niese; some amazing Ellington with Cleo Laine throwing off her 83 years with all the charisma of a great trouper; and a beautiful, newly composed piece for cello and strings by the American Eric Whitacre in the best English pastoral tradition.

    Room was also found for tributes to Julian’s father William, whose beautiful Benedictus was radiantly played by Tasmin Little, and birthday greetings from brother Andrew, accompanying Julian and his wife Jiaxin in some Phantom Of The Opera arrangements.

    During a terrific evening Julian proved his versatility over and over again under the benevolent baton of another great friend, Christopher Warren-Green, and a tireless Philharmonia.

    David Mellor

  • Elgar Cello Concerto

    Daily Telegraph 15th September 1986

    The Cello Concerto receives an affectionate, true-to-the-score and altogether admirable performance from Julian Lloyd Webber with the RPO conducted by our senior Elgarian, Sir Yehudi Menuhin. Opinions differ as to Menuhin’s effectiveness as a conductor, but the results of this recording suggest that he has a mind of his own where this composer is concerned.

    His performance of the Variations is no routine run-through. but a considered and sometimes controversial interpretation. I think he perhaps takes the theme too slowly, but at the same time, just listen to the nuances of string tone that he persuades from the KPO. Even in so competitive a field, this issue commands attention.

    MICHAEL KENNEDY

  • Elgar Cello Concerto

    10th August 2007

    The music of Edward Elgar has never been so popular as it is today, with a capacity audience in the vast expanses of the International Centre celebrating the composer’s 150th anniversary.

    It had as its main attraction Julian Lloyd Webber as the soloist in the Cello Concerto, his interpretation universally acclaimed, the unforced approach presenting a lucid and often deeply moving account of the composer’s autumnal work.

    The solo part does present technical challenges that many soloists today use as a virtuoso showpiece, Lloyd Webber by contrast being at such ease that he effortlessly marries these moments into the general texture.

    In Yehudi Menuhin and the Royal Philharmonic, he had ideal partners, always adding to the work’s outgoing colours, yet perfectly balancing their weight with the lyric qualities of the solo line.

    It was the younger Elgar who painted musical pictures of his friends in the Enigma Variations, tempos here nudged along without ever sounding rushed, the dramatic sections never wanting for impact.

    Walton’s Spitfire Prelude and Fugue was lacking in sheer brio, Vaughan Williams’s overture, The Wasps, superbly buzzing with infinite mischief.

    David Denton

    Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Harrogate International Centre

  • Elgar Cello Concerto

    July 1986

    ELGAR Cello Concerto. Variations on an original theme, ‘Enigma”. Julian Lloyd Webber (vc);

    Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Sir Yehudi Menuhin. Philips digital

    There are some musicians, I am told, who question the abilities of Julian Lloyd Webber as a cellist and Menuhin as a conductor. That, I suppose, is part of the penalty of their name and fame, but it is none the less an unfair and unperceptive judgment which will gain no support from their recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. I prefer it to the recent Yo-Yo Ma Previn performance on CBS and I would risk a small wager that Elgar himself might have preferred it, because it takes note of his own description of the Concerto: “A real large work, and I think good and alive.” Its chief merit is that it projects the work’s emotional intensity without needing to resort to unauthorized extremes of tempo. Lloyd Webber may make the occasional ritardando where none is indicated, but he is otherwise conspicuously faithful to the letter of the score. Menuhin’s moderato tempo in the first movement is just right, it seems to me, sufficiently world-weary without sounding overcome by lassitude. The clarity of the recording, made in a comfortably resonant acoustic, ensures that the happy touches of orchestral detail are heard without undue prominence.

    Menuhin’s account of the Variations lacks some of the finesse that distinguished Mackerras’s HMV recording, but it is the interpretation of a musician who has lived long with this music and loves it. He and the engineers have taken immense care with the timbre of the upper strings in the statement of the theme and there are several passages the prominence given to the lower strings in the middle section of “Dorabella”. for example where Menuhin directs the listener’s attention to yet another facet of this inexhaustibly fascinating score. Nothing ‘routine’ here, nor in the RPO’s playing.

    Michael Kennedy

  • Elgar Cello Concerto

    August 6th 2007

    EDINBURGH YOUTH ORCHESTRA, MUSIC HALL

    With Julian Lloyd Webber as soloist, Elgar’s Cello Concerto played to a capacity audience at the opening of this year’s Youth Festival. Garry Walker conducted the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra, which has already built up its own loyal following here.

    The sedate tempo of the opening of the Concerto seemed disconcerting but Lloyd Webber’s performance soon made its point clear. Constant glances between soloist, conductor and orchestra leader made it obvious that Lloyd Webber intended to impress his stamp firmly on the music. With meticulous technical finesse, he pointed up countless fine details in the score, which can be missed. The gentle autumnal glow of the slow movement was totally entrancing.

    The concert opened with the orchestra in fine fettle in Sir Malcolm Arnold’s Four Scottish Dances. The broad humour of the second Dance came across with great verve and in the third Dance the beautifully transparent sound of the upper strings and woodwind playing were both established as a hallmark of this orchestra.

    These aspects of the playing were crucial in the success of Ravel’s orchestral setting of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. As in Malcolm Arnold’s Dances, this score has its moments of humour, though much more subtly expressed. The Edinburgh orchestra caught the abruptly changing moods of the contrasting pictures perfectly, pointed up by some splendid solo playing throughout the orchestra. The percussion section, which sometimes gets taken for granted, was particularly fine. ALAN COOPER

  • Elgar Cello Concerto

    2nd November 1986

    Elgar Cello Concerto/Lloyd Webber/Belohlavek

    Speaking of Music…..

    The Japan Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra’s subscription concert, conducted by Jiri Bclohlavek, introduced the English cellist, Julian Lloyd Webber, featuring cello concertos by Elgar and Haydn, concluding Hie evening with Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony (Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Oct. 22).

    Lloyd Webber presented a beautifully shaped and warmly toned account of Elgar’s exacting E minor Concerto. It was an intensely enjoyable performance, with playing of strong feeling, finely spun singing line, and, particularly in the slow movement, deep poetry. The orchestral accompaniment guided by Belohlavek had good spirit.

    The Haydn Concerto in D major (Hob. VIlb/4) we heard on this occasion was a novelty – not the familiar one of 1783, but a work based on a cello-piano manuscript version discovered in 1943, from which Lloyd Webber made his own performing version tor cello and strings. Whether or not. this music is really by Haydn is yet to be established. But Lloyd Webber’s enthusiastic playing certainly made a favorable case for it. (There is a Philips recording of this work, coupled with the fine C major Concerto, another recent Haydn discovery, in which Lloyd Webber serves both as soloist and conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra).

    By MARCEL GRILLI

  • Delius Cello Sonata

    Musical Times November 1983

    Delius Cello Sonata with Julian Lloyd Webber

    Record Reviews

    Delius Cello Sonata; Three Piano Preludes; Polka; Zum Carnival.

    Lili Boulanger Piano and Chamber Music. Lloyd Webber, Fenby, Parkin/Parkin, Barry Griffiths, Keith Harvey

    Unicorn-Kanchana DKP 9021

    The fact that in 1919 the Delius cello sonata shared a recital in Paris with some Lili Boulanger songs is excuse enough for bringing these rarities together. It’s all music of subtle distinction. Fenby introduces the Delius side by reading the account from Delius as I knew him of how he accompanied the cello concerto and sonata after his first night at Grez. One can only echo Delius’s ‘Bravo, Fenby, my boy’, and add similar commendation for Julian Lloyd Webber, who has unusual and masterly control of Delius’s ebb and flow. Eric Parkin is sensitive in the atmospheric preludes but needs a dash more irony for the honky-tonk Polka. The Boulanger pieces range from the Harmonies du soir, a transcription for piano trio of an aria from her Prix de Rome cantata of 1913 (Faust et Helens), to the sombre and acrid threnody, D’un soir triste, from the last year of her short life. The music is economical and taut, sensuously alert but controlled with fastidious judgment. The ‘nature’ titles of most of the seven works belie the cogent seriousness other manner. Nothing is facile, nothing is dull, and her interpreters make an eloquent case for music we should hear more of.

    ROBERT ANDERSON

  • Delius Cello Concerto

    18th October 1982

    Delius Cello Concerto – Fairfield Hall

    Philharmonia

    FEW cellists have been as enterprising as Julian Lloyd Webber in extending the concerto repertoire beyond the handful of familiar works. Often such labours have to be their own reward. But the Delius Concerto is really worth resurrecting. The first thing, however, is to forget the title. The work should be classified with those reveries, elegies and meditations which French composers love to write for solo strings. There is no dramatic or perceptible constructive development or interaction between soloist and orchestra. Instead, a sustained outpouring of lyrical melody in which closely related themes seek to merge their identities rather than to declare their independence.

    The work, which calls for the smoothest and sweetest playing, suits Lloyd Webber well. The cellist-poet wanders through a forest of lush sounds and becomes part of the landscape. There are many passages where orchestra leads, with cello supplying melodic arabesques, the equivalent of passages in conventional concertos where the orchestra plays the tunes while the soloist, shows off in elaborate figurations. Take a slice of the Delius Concerto anywhere and you will get a fair sample of the whole. Rearrange your slices in random order and I doubt if most of us would be any the wiser. But Delius’s ability to sustain the mood for 20 minutes ensures that we are drawn in by the spell of the music.

    Hugo Cole