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Category: Reviews

  • Peter Maxwell Davies: The Dundee Courier

    Perth Concert 13th April

    Youth Orchestra in fine form

    By even the most exalted standards the performance by the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra in Perth Concert Hall yesterday was first class in all departments.

    They began with the adagio from Khachaturian’s ballet Spartacus. Immediately, the confidence of the violins struck one, then the superb sound of the oboe, clarinet and flute solos. Working with these, conductor En Shao whipped up a tremendous, emotional, colourful climax.

    Next came Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf with Julian Lloyd Webber as narrator. As a nice touch the winds who represent the characters had masks on top of their heads: bird, duck, cat, wolf as one goes down the score. The piece was finely played and characterised. En Shao got in on the act when the wolf was captured by the tail, shaking the tails of his white tie and tails at Julian Lloyd Webber. It delighted the children in the audience, including the three in front of me who conducted and danced in their seats.

    Back in his day job, as Julian Lloyd Webber quipped, he played a beautiful arrangement by David Horne for solo cello and strings of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s piano piece Farewell to Stromness. It was an effective and affecting piece, evoking such applause from the audience that he responded with an encore: the serenata from Britten’s First Cello Suite.

  • Bruch Kol Nidrei

    Penguin Guide to CDs Yearbook 2000/1

    Cello Moods Review

    ‘Cello moods'(with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, James Judd): FRANCK: Panis angelicus.

    ELGAR: Chanson de matin; Salut d’amour. Julian LLOYD WEBBER: Jackie’s song. DEBUSSY: Reverie. BACH: Suite No 3: Air.

    MASSENET: Thals: Meditation. CACCINI: Ave Maria. B0RODIN: Nocturne. GLAZUNOV: Mélodie, Op. 20/1.

    CHOPIN: Nocturne, Op. 9/2. BOCCHERINI: Cello concerto: Adagio. RHEINBERGER: Cantilena. BRUCH: Kol Nidrei.

    *** Ph. Dig. 462 588-2 [id.1]

    Decorated with extraordinary artwork by Jane Powell, which shows an unclothed cellist, covered only with shadowy music staves (the cello hiding any suggestion of immodesty), this collection of lollipops is obviously aimed at the cross-over market. The playing is of high quality, with none of these famous tunes sentimentalized. Franck’s Pants angelicus and Massenet’s Meditation here sound almost noble on the cello. The other highlights are the charming Glazunov Melodie, the Rheinberger Cantilena, and the very eloquent Max Bruch Kol Nidei. If you enjoy this kind of programme it couldn’t be played better or recorded.

  • Britten Second Suite for Cello

    The Daily Telegraph 24th November 1975

    Vivid reactions to Britten cello works

    In the Cello Sonata, where he was joined by Yitkin Seow at the piano, his tone was robust and well varied, though always tending to darker hues. Both artists were best amid the slightly outlandish excitements of the “Moto Perpetuo”.

    Britten’s compositional virtuosity is especially apparent in the two unaccompanied Suites, with their fugues and diverse character pieces. Mr. Webber’s own virtuosity was very apparent in both works and he coped admirably with such problems as the extreme dynamic contrasts of No.2’s Declamato while showing a strong affinity with the brooding lyricism of the Lamento in No.1.

    M.H.

    The Glasgow Herald 24th October 1975

    Britten Cellos Suites 1 and 2

    At Thursday’s lunchtime concert Julian Lloyd Webber played the two unaccompanied cello suites written by Benjamin Britten for Rostropovich.

    Webber is an enormously talented player and these technically very demanding works appear to cause him no problems; playing from memory his intonation was faultless.

    As to his interpretations, they were deeply revealing.

    Malcolm Rayment

  • Britten First Suite for Cello

    The Daily Telegraph 24th November 1975

    Vivid reactions to Britten cello works

    In the Cello Sonata, where he was joined by Yitkin Seow at the piano, his tone was robust and well varied, though always tending to darker hues. Both artists were best amid the slightly outlandish excitements of the “Moto Perpetuo”.

    Britten’s compositional virtuosity is especially apparent in the two unaccompanied Suites, with their fugues and diverse character pieces. Mr. Webber’s own virtuosity was very apparent in both works and he coped admirably with such problems as the extreme dynamic contrasts of No.2’s Declamato while showing a strong affinity with the brooding lyricism of the Lamento in No.1.

    M.H.

    The Glasgow Herald 24th October 1975

    Britten Cellos Suites 1 and 2

    At Thursday’s lunchtime concert Julian Lloyd Webber played the two unaccompanied cello suites written by Benjamin Britten for Rostropovich.

    Webber is an enormously talented player and these technically very demanding works appear to cause him no problems; playing from memory his intonation was faultless.

    As to his interpretations, they were deeply revealing.

    Malcolm Rayment

    Daily Telegraph 10th October 1975

    Masterly Cellist

    In the Suite No.1 op.72, Britten’s fertile, questing mind explores the scope and capacity of this instrument in a fascinating way; it demands a highly accomplished technique and a true understanding of the cello’s character. At his Manchester Midday recital yesterday, Julian Lloyd Webber gave a masterly and confident performance of this complex, demanding work. He was in complete control of its variations of technique and mood and sustained its impetus to the end.

    Times Educational Supplement 12th January 1973

    Each of the two concerts I was able to attend produced a sensation First, the 21-year-old cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, who jumped right in with the first of the cello suites written by Britten for Rostropovich and got clean away with it. However much his amazing technical control dazzled – there seemed to be no limit to the number of things he could do with one instrument and only, two hands – he never let you forget that he was making music, which is a whole lot more important. He is, I believe, related to the composer; I would rather be able to play the cello as well as this than write Gray’s Elegy, or JCS for that matter.

    Rodney Milnes

  • Britten Cello Symphony Reviews

    The Scotsman 8th November 2000

    Britten Cello Symphony

    BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

    City Hall, Glasgow

    THIS programme, last Saturday, contained a triptych of musical landscapes. Northern latitudes were wonderfully evoked in Sibelius’s Tapiola, which was vibrant and entirely unpastoral. We heard boundless expanses of forest and lake, with snow disturbed by capricious winds blown up by the malign god Tapio.

    Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony also proved to be more muscular than we knew and displayed a huge range of deep colours. The city emerged at first from Turner-like twilight mists, to which it eventually returned after a lively panorama of daytime activity. The orchestral playing was of great refinement.

    The Symphony for Cello and Orchestra surveys Britten’s mental landscape. It had the concentrated musical thought of Tapiola without the pictorialism of the other symphony. Compelling. Julian Lloyd Webber’s mastery of the solo part extended beyond eloquent tone to a higher expressiveness as he integrated his voice within the larger choir. This was also an achievement of conductor Osmo Vänskä.

    Stuart Campbell

  • Britten Cello Symphony Reviews

    Penguin Guide to CDs 1999

    Britten Cello Symphony op. 68

    Death in Venice: suite, Op. 88 (arr. Bedford)

    ***Chandos Dig. CHAN 8363 [id.].(i)

    Wallfisch; ECO, Bedford.

    Julian Lloyd Webber, in his finest recording yet, offers a unique coupling of two works, very different in character but closely parallel in the careers of their composers, each reflecting the mastery of a great Russian cellist (respectively Rostropovich and Piatigorsky). In passionately committed readings he brings out the power of each work and also the beauty, remarkably so in the grittily taxing Britten piece. Helped by sumptuous Philips sound, he and Sir Neville Marriner also demonstrate the extraordinary originality of Britten’s scoring in a way beyond any rival, but find an extra expressive warmth.

  • Britten Cello Symphony Reviews

    Diapason 1998

    Walton Cello Concerto

    Symphonie concert ante pour violoncelle et orchestre.

    WALTON: Concerto pour violoncelle

    Julian Lloyd Webber (violoncelle),

    Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Sir Neville Marriner. Philips 454 442-2 (CD: 168 F). 01996. TT: 1 h 06’35”.

    TECHNIQUE: 8,5 – Grande image orchestra Ie bien construite. Bonne definition. Dynamique imporrante.

    Deux chefs-d’ceuvre qui n’ont en commun que d’avoir ete concus pour de grands violoncellistes russes: le Concerto de Walton pour Gregor Piatigorsky et la Symphonie de Britten pour Mstislav Rostropovitch. Aussi dissemblables que le jour et la nuit, ils exigent’du soliste des qualites tres differentes, et cela n’est pas l’un des moindres merites de Julian Lloyd Webber que de repondre avec une egale ferveur au romantisme chaleureux de Walton comme aux tragiques ruminations de Britten.

    Equivoque et élusive, la Symphonie de ce dernier concilie l’univers féerique du Songe avec l’atmosphère tragique du War Requiem. Son langage fragmenté et pointilliste, sa matière torturée et fuyante en font l’une des pages les plus difficiles d’accès de son auteur. Le violoncelle doit ici concilier des exigences digitales vertigineuses avec une sobriété presque désincarnée, cultivant un rimbre neutre ou une acidité presque grinçante, alternant ici et là avec un lyrisme âpre davantage enclin à la violence qu’à l’effusion. La remarquable intériorité de Julian Lloyd Webber remplit admirablement le contrat: on admirera les tournoiements vertigineux et fantomatiques du Scherzo, puis l’onirisme conféré à l’ineffable dialogue entre le violoncelle, le cor et le basson dans la Passacaille finale.

    Production d’un été indien vouée aux délices d’Ischia, née de la contemplation de la nature et du ciel méditerranéen, le Concerto de Walton offre au contraire au soliste l’occasion de déployer tout le luxe de sa riche palette sonore. Assurément il se retrouve ici en pays de connaissance: il nous avait donné naguère un mémorable Concerto de Delius, et c’est bien aux charmes d’un « jardin du Paradis» que s’abandonne lui aussi avec une grâce nonchalante et sensuelle ce capiteux poème de la Nature. Et c’est bien au rythme de la baguette d’un magicien que semblent s’égoutter, pour l’épilogue, les ruissellements sonores de la harpe, du célesta et du xylophone, éveillant le soliste pour une dernière extase, illuminée du ravissement, de la langueur et de la béatitude des rêves à demi-éveillés.

    MICHEL FLEURY

  • Britten Cello Symphony Reviews

    BBC Music Magazine 1997

    Critics Choice

    Britten Cello Symphony

    Walton Cello Concerto

    Britten Cello Symphony Julian Lloyd Webber

    Philips 454442-2 ****

    Nicholas Williams, music critic, the Independent

    Britten/Walton

    Britten: Cello Symphony

    Walton: Cello Concerto

    Julian Lloyd Webber (cello); Academy of St Martin in the Fields/Neville Marriner Philips 454 442-2 66:35 mins

    The coupling seems obvious, yet is rarely found in the gramophone archives: the Britten Cello Symphony and Walton Cello Concerto are complementary opposites. The link on this disc is Julian Lloyd Webber’s distinctive sound which finds resonant depth in both. Lloyd Webber discovers something new in the Walton – or so it seems, such is his artistry. In the Britten, superb orchestral playing reveals lines and colours undiscovered by previous recordings. (Reviewed October 1997)

  • Britten Cello Symphony Reviews: Hi-Fi News & Record Review

    Hi-Fi News & Record Review November 1997

    Britten Cello Symphony

    Walton Cello Concerto

    BRITTEN: Symphony for Cello & Orchestra

    WALTON: Cello Concerto

    Julian Lloyd webber (vlc)/ASM/Marriner

    Philips 454 442-2

    Despite alternative versions, this is solo interpretation and orchestral collaboration par excellence. Lloyd Webber, whose cello tone reminds me of the long departed Beatrice Harrison’s, has a special affinity with British composers; and Marriner always comes up trumps in concerts and at sessions where great events are the order of the day. Since Rostropovich’s epic-making world premiere of the Britten, other artists have struggled to emulate the Russian’s visionary performances that we heard back in 1963. This one clarifies two things for me: what a fine work it really is, when the balance of instrumentation is so finely judged and the music is allowed to flow naturally; and just how advanced recording techniques can enhance your musical enjoyment. There are no top-heavy emphases in tuttis, or those solo spotlights that take attention away from the score, but a crystal-clear realization of all this complex work demands.

    Lloyd Webber’s description of the Walton’s ‘Mediterranean warmth and sexuality’ became the subject of a three-way Radio 3 discussion recently. Although Harrell/Rattle [EMI] and Cohen/Litton [Decca] equate the solo cello’s sonorous beauties to Walton’s sumptuously rich orchestral textures, Lloyd Webber’s half-veiled tones balance perfectly with Marriner’s natural, warm-styled accompaniment. This is a glowing account of the work in which dynamics are scrupulously observed throughout, and with no sense of lingering during slower passages – for example, in the first of the three cello cadenzas, (ii) four before 19, Lloyd Webber alters his ‘rubato ad lib’ to an accelerando, in order to match the ‘poco meno mosso’ orchestral re-entry and the overall Allegro appassionato tempo direction.

    An essential addition to the ever-growing British Music discography.

    Newman

  • Britten Cello Symphony Reviews

    Classic FM Magazine September 1997

    Walton Cello Concerto

    It took an altogether more volcanic temperament of English music than Finzi’s to engender Britten’s darkly tremendous Cello Symphony (Philips 454 442-2). Julian Lloyd Webber’s fabulous performance is one of the few I’ve heard that’s at all comparable to that of Rostropovich, for whose transcendent expertise and power the work was written. Lloyd Webber is just as convincing in the wry and romantically sun-dappled sound-world of Walton’s Cello Concerto. Fine accompaniments and ultra-clear recordings set the seal on an exceptional disc.

    Malcolm Hayes