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Category: Reviews

  • Delius Cello Sonata

    The Independent 19th September 1997

    Julian Lloyd Webber plays Delius

    Delius Memorial Concert Wigmore Hall, London

    Many composers have their quiet helpers, doing anything from filling in lax returns to sharpening pencils. For most British music lovers, however, the role of amanuensis surely conjures up just one image: that of Eric Fenby, who died earlier this year.

    Image is the right word, for the abiding view – of the ailing Frederick Delius impatiently dictating his pent-up music to this young assistant – was a product of the famous Ken Russell film about the composer. As recalled in Fenby’s words in the programme of Tuesday’s Wigmore Hall memorial concert, that was also how be remembered Delius when listening to one of those late pieces, so painfully written by dictation. Music’s power as a shorthand for memory is undervalued, but surely not be Delius fans. His music, after all, unlocks the sort of nostalgic memories we never thought we had.

    That seemed clear from the Cello Sonata of 1916 that began the musical partof the evening, after a moving tribute to Fenby’s work from The Delius Society’s current president, Felix Aprahamian. Its sonorous phrases reached up from the depths of the instrument’s lowest string as if made for the velvet legato of Julian Lloyd Webber. In fact, they were written for the Russian cellist Alexandre Barjansky, but Lloyd Webber was playing Barjansky’s cello, which was nearly the same thing. A heart-stopping moment that verged on the edge of sound formed the core of the slow movement. From this, the rest of the music advanced and receded.

    As in the Second Violin Sonata of 1923, played in Tertis’s viola version by Philip Dukes with pianist Sonia Rahman, there was musical eloquence of a different order from the picturesque note found in the great programmatic pieces.

    For those who love Delius of the “abstract” music best, this was, indeed, an ideal concert; and with Tasmin Little and Piers Lane also playing the Third Violin Sonata, there was no escaping the sense of a corpus of chamber music equal at least to Elgar’s, yet still neglected.

    The Third Sonata of 1930 was Fenby’s transcription; its limpid rhythms and touches of pure Delius in the scherzo’s mono mosso were an apt memento to the amanuensis. His role as a vessel for such inspiration implied a mentality the opposite of his atheistic master’s. You could tell as much from two Fenby originals with holy words’ and themes. A set of evening canticles, though written in 1932, bore no trace of pagan Delian harmonies.

    In For Music on the Eve of Palm Sunday from the same year, also superbly revived by The Elysian Singers of London, conductor Matthew Greenall, a mood of sadness was not just part of the text in question. It was a touching piece, and one that made you wonder about the price of devotion to genius.

    Nicholas Williams

  • Delius 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

  • Delius Cello Sonata

    Musical Times November 1983

    Delius Cello Sonata and Cello Concerto 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 Sonata

    The Guardian 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

  • Delius Cello Sonata

    The Financial Times 20th November 1980

    Julian Lloyd Webber/ Delius

    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 pharsing 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

  • Delius Cello Sonata

    classicalsource.com – March 2013

    Barnes Music Festival – William Lloyd Webber, Delius & John Ireland – Artists include Verter Trio, Julian Lloyd Webber & Min-Jin Kym

    The Barnes Music Festival prospectus advertised this concert as being “an enchanting programme of f amiliar classics alongside lesser known works including Delius’s Cello Concerto (sic)…”, and it indicated that works by Purcell and Bax would also be played. But somewhere along the line the event turned into a celebration to mark the centenary of William Lloyd Webber, father of Andrew and Julian, whose compositions dominated the evening.

    William Lloyd Webber’s Fantasy Trio, written in 1936, was a good indicator of the tone of things to come. The work is a skilfully constructed piece in one movement, recognisably in the English style of the period that will be familiar to those who know Ireland, Bax or the younger Frank Bridge. The quality of invention, while not compelling, is high enough to keep one’s attention and the Verter Trio gave a thoroughly committed performance. Three organ pieces then fell pleasantly on the ear, and after being interviewed interestingly about his father by Daniel Turner, Julian Lloyd Webber displayed his Stradivarius cello’s beautiful tone in two more miniatures by WLW.

    Rebeca Omodia, a sympathetic accompanist, then entered more into the picture with Delius’s Cello Sonata. Julian Lloyd Webber is the leading exponent of this work, and has recorded it at least twice, once with the composer’s associate and amanuensis Eric Fenby. He gave a passionate, highly communicative performance.

    After the interval, Omodia showed her considerable skills in sympathetic, neatly turned accounts of further W. Lloyd Webber pieces, and was then joined by the husband-and-wife cello-duo in three arrangements. Jiaxin was by no means at a disadvantage compared with her partner, and is clearly a highly skilled performer. (They have recorded this and similar repertoire for Naxos, on 8.57325.) Min-Jin Kym, who hit the headlines four years ago when her Stradivarius was stolen from her in a Euston-station cafe and then subsequently found if only recently, now uses another instrument by the same maker. With Daniel Turner, she played W. Lloyd Webber’s Benedictus.

    In the final work, John Ireland’s Second Piano Trio, the Verter musicians played with great devotion and responded well to both the work’s darker elements and its virtuosic qualities. There were times when it was thought that music such as this could only be realised satisfactorily by native-born artists, and it was heartening to experience such a finely played and sympathetic performance by an Israeli pianist, a South-Korean violinist and a Chinese cellist.

    Alan Sanders

  • Delius Cello Sonata

    The Daily Telegraph 20th November 1980

    Julian Lloyd Webber plays Delius

    Julian Lloyd Webber

    Eric Parkin

    Eric Fenby

    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 music, showed how mature his art has become.

    D.A.W.M.

  • Delius Cello Sonata

    Gramophone – January 2013

    Gramophone Reissues – ‘The Delius Collection’ – the recordings by Eric Fenby

    ‘The Cello Sonata, always a difficult work to interpret and one fraught with the dangers of monotony, is brought to life beautifully by Julian Lloyd Webber’s careful shades and graded phrases.’

    Jeremy Dibble

  • Delius Cello Sonata

    The Times 20th November 1980

    Julian Lloyd Webber plays Delius

    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

  • Delius Cello Sonata

    Classicalsource.com September 24, 2012

    Julian Lloyd Webber & John Lenehan at Wigmore Hall – Ireland and Delius

    Ireland -Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano

    Delius – Caprice and Elegy, Romance, Sonata for Cello and Piano

    The anniversaries of two composers and the cellist connecting them were marked in this BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert at Wigmore Hall. The 50th-anniversary of John Ireland’s death and the 150th-anniversary of the birth of Frederick Delius are relatively well documented; though it could be argued neither has properly had the coverage in concert halls that they deserve, even this year. Binding the works of the two together is the cellist Beatrice Harrison, born 120 years ago, the dedicatee of the Delius’s Sonata and his Caprice and Elegy, and who gave the first performance of Ireland’s Sonata in 1924.

    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 Fauré 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, with glowering low-register cello statements and assertive interventions from Lenehan. Gradually the gloomy mood dissipated, with a whispered aside marking the intimate second theme of the first movement, its marking of ‘secreto’ perfectly observed. Lloyd Webber’s tone throughout this was probing in the mid-register, and the high notes were completely secure as the ending of each faster movement somehow negotiated its way in to G major.

    Delius’s Caprice and Elegy is from 1930 and is much more concise than the Romance, the Caprice part especially effective with its tumbling five-note motif which was given by Lenehan in a beautiful pianissimo. Lloyd Webber’s cantabile line gave the melody a light touch, and the chromatic Elegy was soft-hearted but profound.

    Delius’s Cello Sonata is a single movement in three sections, each with long-breathed tunes that need to be followed from the outset, lest listeners feel they are cutting-in to the middle of a conversation. The sweeps of melody and wandering harmonies went well together in this performance, though the relative lack of fast music made the dynamic observations all the more telling. The beautiful falling theme that becomes the Sonata’s calling card was affectionately played, the piece building to a triumphant conclusion.

    The appropriate encores were Ireland’s arrangement of his song The Holy Boy, followed by Lloyd Webber’s transcription of the equally well-loved Sea Fever. Both were given with obvious affection, showing that Ireland’s melodic genius is ultimately to be found in shorter form, with his longer works reserved perhaps for more personal insights.

    Ben Hogwood