“…a succession of hilarious anecdotes…continuing through a brilliant career with amusing but pungent comment.”
Barrie Grayson, Birmingham Post
List content will go here
Category: Reviews
-
Britten Third Suite for Cello
11th March 1981
“Webber gives the expected virtuoso performance…the prize of the ASV collection. Lloyd Webber splendidly brings out what might almost be thought of as the schizophrenic side of the piece, the play between registers high and low, used not just to imply full orchestral textures but to interweave opposing ideas. With Lloyd Webber the climax of the Passacaglia is extroadinarily powerful, and his commitment is just as intense in the two pieces on the reverse – a brief poignant Elegy by Frank Bridge and John Ireland’s Cello Sonata.”
-
Britten Third Suite for Cello: Daily Telegraph
20th November 1980
Julian Lloyd Webber, Eric Parkin, Eric Fenby
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.
-
Britten Third Suite for Cello
20th November 1980
Julian Lloyd Webber plays Britten’s Cello Suite no 3
WIGMORE HALL
Lloyd Webber/ Parkin/Fenby
Ken Russell’s film A Song 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
-
Britten Third Suite for Cello
11th November 1980
Julian Lloyd Webber plays Britten’s Cello Suite no 3
WIGMORE HALL
Edward Greenfield
lloyd Webber Recital
NO MORE dedicated advocate of English cello music has emerged in recent years than Julian Lloyd-Webber, and it was good to find him attracting a large audience for what a few years ago might have seemed a very specialised programme of Ireland, Delius, Bridge and Britten.
True, it was Britten’s Third Cello Suite for solo cello which at the end of the programme conveyed a degree of concentration in the argument largely missing till then. One might have expected that in his third essay in this inevitably restricted form Britten’s inspiration would have contracted, but Lloyd-Webber if anything more than the dedicatee, Rostropovich, proves the opposite with eight movements, jewelled in their compression, leading to the culminating passacaglia and epilogue.
As a splendid start to the programme came the G minor Cello Sonata of John Ireland with Eric Parkin, long dedicated to the music of this composer, matching Lloyd Webber in responding to the taut, neurasthenic side of the composer as well as the relaxed warmth of the all-too-brief central slow movement.
For Delius’s elusive Cello Sonata the doyen of Delians, to whose toils we actually owe the last works, Eric Fenby, added his unique authority. Alas, unlike the Double Concerto written about the same time, it is a work which meanders even in a performance as persuasive as this.
Edward Greenfield
-
Britten Cello Sonata
Guardian 15th October 1980
St John’s – Park Lane Group
Re-hearing Britten’s 1961 Cello Sonata, Opus 65, written at the start of his association with Rostropovitch, was an uncanny experience. I had forgotten just how potent were the dark elegaic landscapes, the abrasive, hard-hitting disturbances. The intensity of Julian Lloyd Webber’s performance, grave and wild by turns, was riveting.
Edward Seckerson
-
Britten Cello Sonata
April 1980
“Julian Lloyd Webber’s intelligent and lively artistic personality ensured some marvellously tough characterisation in Britten’s Cello Sonata. It now goes without saying that here is one of the most thoroughly-grounded, assured techniques among cellists. The pizzicato Scherzo was a tour-de-force of scarifying nerve, and those glissandos towards the end of the March were as firmly drawn and bitingly satirical as those on Rostropovich’s classic recording.”
ANDREW KEENER
-
Britten Third Suite for Cello
Daily Telegraph 15th August 1979
Wigmore Hall
Lloyd Webber/Parkin
IN THE second programme of the John Ireland centenary festival the composer was represented last night by his cello Sonata in G major, a work which employs strong themes and integrates them with great skill.
Julian Lloyd Webber, who had been heard in the Ravel Piano Trio at the opening concert, was well equipped to carry out a full-scale interpretation and his pianist partner Eric Parkin was equally persuasive with his deft and mercurial playing.
The programme was designed to link Ireland with his teacher Stanford and pupil Britten. Stanford, who studied in Germany and was born only 19 years after Brahms, was represented by his Second cello Sonata in D minor, greatly influenced by Brahms and a highly polished, eloquent work to which both players brought a sureness and grandeur.
On his own Mr Webber played Britten’s unaccompanied Third Suite in C with a great deal of brilliance in the Fantastico and Presto, a spacious dimension in the final Passacaglio and a smoothness of execution which marks him as one of the most gifted young artists.
DAWM
-
Brahms Sonatas for cello and piano
Guardian 1978
St Johns Concert – Brahms E minor Sonata
FEW CELLISTS of whatever age or celebrity produce such consistently true and opulent sounds as Julian Lloyd Webber. Only recently it was a misery to find a crude amplification system getting in the way of his natural sound when at the Festival Hall he played his brother’s lively set of Variations, but here at St John’s Smith Square, in the kindest of acoustics for the cello, we heard from him a display of velvet textures in every sonic colour imaginable.
The first half brought purposefulness in the Brahms E minor Cello sonata, Opus 38, but then with Simon Nicholls as his agile but discreet piano partner he went on to a set of romantic pieces, some inconsequential, some langorous.
The one frustration was that Rachmaninov’s Great Cello Sonata was represented only by the central slow movement, and that is a work which I suspect suits Lloyd-Webber’s ripely romantic style even more than the Brahms.
Above all Lloyd Webber is a cellist with an ability to persuade, and so it was not only in warhorse pieces like Saint-Saens’s ever-buoyant Swan but also in Mendelssohn’s late Song Without Words for cello and the stunning Elfin Dance of David Popper, which perfectly suited the vein of naughtiness which regularly leavens the playing of a potentially major artist. Edward Greenfield
-
Britten Cello Sonata: 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.