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Category: Reviews

  • Britten Cello Symphony

    1997

    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

    These are starkly contrasted works, each written for great Russian cellists: the warmly Romantic Walton Concerto for Gregor Piatigorsky, and Britten’s dark and angst-ridden Cello Symphony composed for Rostropovich. The solo part in the Britten is more truly integrated into the work’s fabric – the material is symphonic in weight and treatment, thus justifying the title.

    Listeners need not be deterred by the sombre nature of the Britten. Repeated hearings are rewarded by the revelation of many riches -like Britten’s brilliantly inventive and arresting orchestrations using unusual combinations such as double bassoon, bass clarinet, tuba and percussion. The Allegro maestoso first movement, for instance, ends with the disconsolate cello, pizzicato, crushed between a plaintively wailing clarinet and the seethings of the lower-pitched instruments sounding like the snarlings of beasts from hell. And, in the Adagio, there is a magical passage where the cello meditates, remotely, over lightly brushed cymbals and distant trumpets before its gentle musings are crushed by cruel, relentless percussion hammerings. Lloyd Webber plays out Britten’s dark drama with deep conviction and he is ardent in the better-known, sunnier and vivacious Walton Concerto. Marriner and his Academy players give virtuoso performances in support.

    Ian Lace

    PERFORMANCE *****

    SOUND *****

  • Britten Cello Symphony

    11th July 1997

    Britten Cello Symphony

    Walton Cello Concerto

    Lloyd Webber/ASMF/Marriner (Philips 454 442-2) ****

    Julian Lloyd Webber, in his finest recording yet, neatly couples two works that, though closely parallel in the careers of their composers, could hardly be more sharply contrasted. Not only does he bring out the power of each work, but the beauty too, both in the lusciously romantic Walton concerto, and in the grittily taxing Britten piece, helped by sumptuous recorded sound. In the Britten, the extraordinary originality of the scoring is presented as never before on disc, while the Walton, in this passionate performance, is confirmed as fully equal to his pre-war concerto masterpieces for viola and violin.

    Edward Greenfield

  • Britten Cello Symphony review

    Mail on Sunday 13th July 1997

    Walton Cello Concerto

    Britten Cello Symphony Julian Lloyd Webber

    Phlhps 454442-2 ****

    Julian Lloyd Webber has joined forces with conductor Sir Neville Marriner to produce this moving new recording of two great cello works. For the Britten, Lloyd Webber makes his cello hum with questing intensity and dark-hued rumblings. He imbues the work with a warped sweetness and a rugged grandeur which brings out the work’s rather Russian feel (it was, after all, written for Rostropovich). Marriner dictates a slow, inexorable tread – the sad, plangent melodies are deliberately trampled underfoot Even the sense of calm in the last movement here seems illusory – a submission, not a resolution. In the Walton too, there is a haunting, unsettling quality to the performance. A disc to test your emotions and your nerve.

    James Inverne

  • Britten Cello Symphony Review

    1987

    Britten Cello Symphony, Walton Cello Concerto

    Classical Records

    Michael Kennedy

    Britten/ Walton Cello Symphony, Cello Concerto.

    Lloyd Webber, AMF/ Marriner (Philips 454442-2).

    Britten’s work dates from 1963, Walton’s from 1956. Each was its composer’s first major orchestral work for many years, each was inspired by a great Russian virtuoso (Rostropovich and Piatigorsky). There the resemblance ends. The Cello Symphony is one of Britten’s darkest and mysteriously ambivalent scores, a long and difficult progression from angst and turbulence to what, remembering Billy Budd, one might call a ‘far-shining sail’ ending. Walton’s is a languorous, amorous piece, drenched in Italian sun but not without a vein of melancholy. And for all its apparent conservatism and ease, it is highly original in design and, likethe Britten, makes fiendish demands on the soloist.

    Julian Lloyd Webber plays both with intuitive sympathy and a heart-warming perception of their contrasted virtues. His interpretation of the first movement of the Britten is less tense and stormy than Rostropovich’s but in some respects penetrates deeper into its morosely elegiac musings. In Walton’s more cantabile themes, he gives lyrical rein to the long phrasing and is notably skilful and eloquent in the cadenza. Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields provide excellent support. A fine disc.

  • Britten Cello Symphony Reviews

      November 1987

    Britten Cello Symphony, Walton Cello Concerto

    CLASSICAL

    Britten: Cello Symphony/ Walton: Cello Concerto.

    Julian Lloyd Webber/ Academy of St Martins/ Neville Marriner.

    (Philips, CD.)

    These two British classics of the modern cello repertory were written more or less contemporaneously (six years apart) and both for Russian virtuosi (Rostropovich, Piatigorsky) but otherwise they speak for different worlds. The Britten is hard with knuckle whitening tension: brittle, angular and beaten by East Coast winds into one of his least lovable though most remarkable scores. The Walton has its share of nervous drive, but is essentially a wistful, late-Romantic soundscape of a warm Italian summer night – as experienced, no doubt, from the terrace of the composer’s home on Ischia. And Lloyd Webber has the measure of both: a specialist in (even expat) British repertory who feels the music deeply and communicates with passion. In the Britten you won’t find the bite of Rostropovich’s attack in his definitive Sixties recording; and in the Walton it may be that Lynn Harrell’s version for EMI has more muscular power. But no one plays more beautifully than Julian Lloyd Webber, or with more commitment. His instinctive sense of line and all-round musicality are admirable. And with truly opulent support from Marriner, who isn’t afraid to indulge a spot of spangled, starlit magic when the opportunity presents itself, he finds just the right tempo for the opening of the Walton (not easy) and manages the last movement’s tricky shift of gear into the reprise of the big tune with seamless elegance.

    Michael White

  • Britten Cello Symphony Reviews

    Diapason October 1998

    Sonate pour violoncelle et piano.

    SERGE PROKOFIEV: Ballade op. 15.

    DIMITRI CHOSTAKOVITCH: Sonate pour violoncelle et piano.

    Julian Lloyd Webber (violoncelle), John McCabe (piano).

    Philips 422 345-2 (CD : 148 F). 1988. Minutage: 57’11”.

    Un magnifique récital de musique de notre temps, faisant se rencontrer Chostakovitch et Britten, avant qu’une dernière amitié ne les lie dans la vie comme dans leur musique. Julian Lloyd Webber traite avec une égale splendeur leurs deux sonates, pourtant distantes de plus d’un quart de siècle. Ce traitement donne un nouvel éclat à l’Opus 65 de Britten. John McCabe, sans faire oublier le compositeur au piano avec Rostropovitch, s’impose dans le dialogue, tantôt de-bussyste, tantôt pré-classique de cette suite en cinq danses. Lloyd Webber, sans chercher à retrouver le lyrisme enjôleur de Slava, joue le jeu du Dia-logo original, accentue l’hispanisme stylisé du Scherzo-pizzicato, se souvient de Delius dans l’Elegie; il installe une tension dramatique post-schubenienne, qui donne une réelle consistance à la Marcia, dans sa démarche proche des Pas dans la neige debussystes, ainsi qu’aux abrupts changements de climat du Moto perpétua final. Ce même traitement convient un peu moins bien à la Sonate très classique de forme de Chostakovitch. Le déroutant Allegro initial exige une grande fluidité de phrasé tout en étant marqué de contrastes sous-jacents, à la manière de l’Opus 65 de Chopin.

    PIERRE-E. BARBIER

    TECHNIQUE C.D. : 6

    Image sombre, manquant de brillant

  • Britten Cello Symphony Reviews

    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

    1999

    Britten Cello Symphony op. 68

    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.

  • Bridge Oration

    Music Web

    Benjamin BRITTEN (1913-1976) Cello Symphony op. 68 (1963) [37:37] Frank BRIDGE (1879-1941) Oration – Concerto Elegiaco for cello and orchestra (1930) [30:41] Steven Isserlis (cello) City London Sinfonia/Richard Hickox rec. Studio 1, Abbey Road, London, 12, 14 March 1987. DDD EMI CLASSICS BRITISH COMPOSERS 5059162 [68:18]

    There are plenty of links between Britten and Bridge. Britten was one of Bridge’s pupils. They both held pacifist sympathies. Britten was ‘blown away’ by Bridge’s suite The Sea and by the towering masterpiece that is Enter Spring – both heard by the young composer at the Norwich Festivals of the 1920s. The influence of Bridge and especially of The Sea can be heard in Britten’s Peter Grimes. Britten wrote his Frank Bridge Variations. Britten was instrumental in the Bridge revival of the 1960s into the 1970s when Bridge’s music had sunk past the plunge of plummet. Aldeburgh was the scene of some fine Bridge revivals conducted by Britten – The Sea and Enter Spring. Britten’s circle including Steuart Bedford carried the Bridge baton forward into a world more accommodating of Bridge’s styles and idioms. That their two works for cello and orchestra are coupled on one CD now enjoying its third issue is fitting although to date this is the first and only such coupling. These recordings were first issued by EMI Classics as CDC 7 49716 2 in the late 1980s. They were then reissued as CDM7639092 in 1992 (also in the British Composers series) and they now reappear again.

    The Cello Symphony was written for Rostropovich who made the iconic Decca recording of it with the composer and the ECO in the 1960s. It came two years after the War Requiem and Cello Sonata and one year before the Cello Suite No. 1. All these works were bound up with Rostropovich in one way or another. Isserlis and Hickox in their emotive performance are treated to a wide spread and warmly embracing recording. There are many highlights including the desolating serenade at end of first track; not to mention the Coplandesque stride of the trumpet entwining the cello in tr. 5. From time to time one also hears music harking back to Grimes and to the Purcell Variations. As for the Bridge, which I must say puts the Britten in the shade in terms of sheer humane fibre and memorable quality, it is given a performance of powerful conviction if lacking the sheer concentration of the Lloyd Webber on Lyrita.

    Previously these two major pieces have been grouped with other things – either shorter pieces by Bridge or similar concerto-scale pieces by other composers including Walton. Wallfisch’s Bridge is on a fine Nimbus CD is with Holst’s Invocation and with the Elgar concerto – a good juxtaposition since both are suffused with the impact of the Great War. The unjustly forgotten but superb Pearl recording by Alexander Baillie and the Cologne radio orchestra conducted by John Carewe had Enter Spring as an apt companion. It has been deleted – more’s the pity. The Chandos Bridge series’ Oration is played by Alban Gerhardt and is coupled with other Bridge. Then again there’s the perfectly balanced, and I think, definitive reading by Julian Lloyd Webber recently reissued on Lyrita. The Lyrita is adroitly matched with Peter Wallfisch’s Phantasm which stylistically speaking is in very much the same territory as Oration.

    Rob Barnett

  • Bridge Oration

    26th October 2006

    Frank Bridge Oration review

    ENGLISH MUSIC FESTIVAL, Dorchester Abbey, DORCHESTER-ON- THAMES

    Any festival that boasts Boris Johnson as president sounds like a boisterous occasion. Heirs and Rebels, the first English Music Festival to be mounted in and around Dorchester, south Oxfordshire, is devoted to the “diversity, innovation and brilliance” of English composers often neglected in concert programming.

    It’s a bold venture. Where else would one bump into the Viola Sonata of Alger- non Ashton, a rhapsody by Elgar’s supporter William Reed, and a suite by Benjamin Dale? Or venture into Lord Berners’ Luna Park, and spot Jeremy Irons narrating Vaughan Williams’s An Oxford Elegy?

    The five-day festival’s opening concert was given by the BBC Concert Orchestra, which rapidly made its mark with a blistering fanfare — shades of Tippett and Walton, but cleverly original – newly commissioned from Gareth Wood. Stylish and witty, it could win a place in the repertoire.

    The chance to hear rare Hoist, scintillatingly played, was welcome. His Walt Whitman Overture of 1899 occupies an attractive netherworld of post-Meistersinger froth; it could have used even more élan than it received here.

    Clarinet and viola heralding Vaughan Williams’s Norfolk Rhapsody No 1 unleashed a shiveringly beautiful performance, revelling in the warmth of the folk song idiom, utterly fresh in its day (1906).

    The most bracing work was by Britten’s mentor, Frank Bridge. Oration, his haunting cello concerto, is a passionate outcry against the ravages of the Great War. The inexorable trudge of its dark, passacaglia-like cortege, chromatic and knotty, seemed to sum up the miseries f the Front. Julian Lloyd Webber proved utterly sympathetic to the angst-ridden solo line, as the cello strives to extricate a pained and poignant lyricism from the tensions of the orchestral hinterland.

    Lloyd Webber returned for more Holst — his rarely- heard Invocation (1911)— for a memorable second half contribution. Yet it was Sullivan who made the running his Irish Symphony given the full works, setting the pace for the symphonies of Stanford to come. Patently English music, and palpably alive and kicking.

    – Roderic Dunnett