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Tag: reviews1

  • And the Bridge is Love

    The Classical Reviewer 19th May 2015

    With a vivid recording, Julian Lloyd Webber and the English Chamber Orchestra bring one of the finest discs of English Music for Strings currently available on a new release from Naxos It has recently been announced that cellist Julian Lloyd Webber www.julianlloydwebber.com has been appointed the new Principal of the Birmingham Conservatoire. I can think of no better musician to help ensure the future of musical education in Britain, thus making his appointment the ideal choice.

    Since a neck injury forced his decision to retire as a cellist it is to be hoped that this new post will give Lloyd Webber opportunities to forge a new career. However, it is not only as the Principal of the Birmingham Conservatoire that this fine musician is forging new paths.

    A new release from Naxos www.naxos.com features Julian Lloyd Webber as conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra www.englishchamberorchestra.co.uk in a collection of English Music for Strings entitled And the Bridge is Love. This new recording includes no less than four world premiere recordings.

    The strings of the English Chamber Orchestra really bite into the opening bars of Edward Elgar’s (1857-1934) Introduction and Allegro, Op. 47 (1905) before the music slows. Julian Lloyd Webber brings some particularly fine moments of hushed repose, so sensitive and thoughtful. The ECO provide a very fine string tone in some beautiful passages, offset by the most intense emotional moments. There is a beautiful care of dynamics, particularly when leading into faster passages. This is tip top string playing with terrific ensemble. Lloyd Webber pushes the music ahead with great drive before the glorious broad sweeping passages which lead towards the coda.

    This is a particularly fine performance that must rank among the very best on record.

    This conductor brings his fine musicianship to Elgar’s Sospiri, Op. 70 (1914) in a performance that draws the most exquisite playing from the ECO, subtly drawing moments of intensity and a richness of string texture that is really quite lovely.

    Julian Lloyd Webber gives the world premiere recording of his father, William Lloyd Webber’s (1914-1982) The Moon (1950). This lovely little piece has a quintessential Englishness that fits perfectly into this programme; a lovely, subtle rise and fall with some lovely string playing.

    Howard Goodall’s (b.1958) And the Bridge Is Love (2008) is another world premiere recording that gives this disc its title. This performance features Lloyd Webber as conductor and cello soloist. The title is a quotation from a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) http://thorntonwilder.com and was composed in memory of a young cellist, the daughter of a close friend of the composer.

    The piece opens quietly on lower strings together with harp before Lloyd Webber brings a cello melody that arises, slowly becoming firmer and supported by an increasingly richer orchestral string sound. The music moves through some lovely passages, at times very much in the English tradition yet with a contemporary feel. Lloyd Webber finds much beauty as well as some terrific little phrases for cello that add interest to the music. There is a poignant coda, especially so if this is the last recording we are likely to have from this great cellist.

    Ralph Vaughan Williams’ (1872-1958) The Charterhouse Suite began life as a Suite of Six Short Pieces for Piano published in 1921before being orchestrated by James Brown in collaboration with Vaughan Williams and renamed The Charterhouse Suite, after his old school and published in 1923. Here we are given just the short Prelude. It has a buoyant, jolly theme played here with crisp precision.

    A lovely rhythmic buoyancy opens the Allegro Piacevole of Elgar’s Serenade for Strings, Op.20 (1892) bringing a subtle orchestral rubato and beautifully judged tempi. There is a beautifully shaped Larghetto with Lloyd Webber again finding lovely sonorities and beautiful, natural flow. The Allegretto – Come prima brings a lovely lilt, a gentle spring to the music as well as some fine string details.

    It was Frederick Delius’ (1862-1934) amanuensis, Eric Fenby, that arranged the composer’s Two Songs to be sung of a summer night on the water (1917) for wordless unaccompanied chorus as Two Aquarelles (1917/1932). Here No.1: Lento, ma non troppo is beautifully done, just the right amount of ebb and flow with lovely string sonorities. No.2: Gaily, but not quick has a nice rhythmic lift, such a fleeting nature before it rises only to fall to a lovely coda. These two lovely miniatures are beautifully played.

    Violinist, leader of the London Symphony Orchestra and friend of Elgar, W. H. (Billy) Reed arranged the composer’s Chanson De Nuit and Chanson De Matin for string orchestra in 1939. Lloyd Webber and the English Chamber Orchestra bring a calm, gentle stateliness as Chanson De Nuit, Op. 15, No. 1 (1897/1939) unfolds, before subtly allowing the music to rise, nicely shaped, beautifully phrased and wonderfully controlled. Chanson De Matin, Op. 15, No. 2 (1899/1939) is, again, beautifully shaped and phrased with fine flexible tempi.

    William Walton’s (1902-1983) Two Pieces for Strings from Henry V (1944) are taken from his music for Laurence Olivier’s film of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Passacaglia: Death of Falstaff achieves a fine, dark opening, hushed and mysterious and with a depth that is often missed. The music opens out exquisitely before the hushed coda. To follow there is a lovely Touch her soft lips and part, gentle, exquisite and finely controlled.

    John Ireland (1879-1962) wrote his A Downland Suite for the National Brass Band Championships in 1932. In four sections, Ireland later arranged the second and third sections for string orchestra, Geoffrey Bush arranging the first and fourth sections. Here Julian Lloyd Webber and the English Chamber Orchestra play No.3. Minuet: Allegretto Grazioso (1942) in a lovely performance that is beautifully paced and shaped, bringing some very fine playing from the orchestra.

    With a vivid recording from Watford Colosseum, Watford, England this is one of the finest discs of such repertoire available. There are informative notes from Peter Avis and Howard Goodall.

    Bruce Reader

  • And the Bridge is Love: BBC Radio 3 ‘CD Review’

    May 2 2015

    Elgar: Introduction and Allegro; Serenade for Strings; Sospiri; Chanson de Matin; Chanson de Nuit

    William Lloyd Webber: The Moon

    Howard Goodall: And the Bridge is Love

    Vaughan Williams: Charterhouse Suite – Prelude

    Delius: Two Aquarelles

    Walton: Henry V— Passacaglia, ‘Touch her soft lips and part’

    Ireland: A Downland Suite-Minuet

    Julian Lloyd Webber (‘cello), English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Julian Lloyd Webber

    Recorded at Watford Colosseum, 22nd to 24th April, 2014 Duration: 70:07 Naxos: 8.573250

    ‘What I like most is that Lloyd Webber knows how string players breath, understands how the bow works.’

    ‘There is a real sense of harmony with the players and as a result Julian gets really characterful soloistic playing out of the English Chamber Orchestra.’

    ‘It’s a joy to listen to, fabulous stuff and Julian brings a lushness to the strings.’

    ‘Elgar’s Sospiri – .the richness and beauty of the playing, sublimely encapsulated in the one piece.’

  • Andrew Lloyd Webber

    Turkish Daily News 27th June 2007

    Classic brilliance resonates in ancient walls

    Istanbul Concert Review

    Music gently winds through the corridors of the ancient Byzantine structure Hagia Eirini, at the concert, Festival Meetings II, performed by an acclaimed cellist, cello quartet and pianist

    As four cellists raise their bows in the air and strike the cellos strings with utmost grace, Bach’s Air in D Major gently resonates in a former Eastern Orthodox Church, Hagia Eirini Museum (Aya lrini) at the Topkapi Palace on Monday night. As the music gently whines through the corridors of the ancient Byzantine structure and rises to the atrium, a surreal musical journey begins in an enchanting setting of history and culture that creates the perfect atmosphere for music lovers of all ages. Festival Meetings II, featuring an acclaimed cellist, Julian Lloyd Webber, cello quartet çellistanbul and pianist Pam Chowhan is part of the 35th International Istanbul Music Festival. The festival is the latest creation of a creative musician and an ensemble of musicians whose passion for classical sound resonates from their soul. Istanbul’s own cello quartet ‘çeliistanbul’, started the audience on a journey of choral harmonies. Inspired by the city Istanbul and its magical atmosphere, the group is formed of cellists who graduated from the same Conservatoire of music their repertoire includes classical as well as modern works. “I am on a Long, Narrow Road” was a special composition for the quartet based on Asik Veysel’s melody that proved to the audience they were witnessing brilliant performers.

    Each cord was played in unison echoing the emotion of the music on the individual faces and swaying bodies 0r the cellists. The group was one entity playing off each other’s enthusiasm and passion. Their long composition was met with equal pleasure from the audience as each note created tension in the already thick church air. The last note in the composition is held in harmony. The audience holds its breath. Time stops. The note finishes. The stunned audience breaks the silence with loud cheers and applause.

    The group also known for their works of tango and jazz finish off their set with Tango Passionata and Polonaise. The second set welcomes Julian Lloyd Webber to the stage with Pam Chowham accompanying him on the piano. He too begins with Bach’s C Major Adagio followed by Scherzetto. At first the music did not flow together.

    There seemed to be tension as each performer kept looking for signs and warmth the two instruments should create. It was not until Scherzo Pizzicato that the union warmed up and put their bows aside; Webber played the cello with his fingers. Claude Debussy’s Sonata (1915) was long and stunning. Inspired with patriotic sentiments his music flowed with watery magic to dark virtuosity. It was multi-faceted brilliance that was written for the flute, piano and cello and it worked with Chowhan accompanying Webber on the piano. The night was not over yet, as ‘çellistanbul’ joined Webber on stage to perform the last three compositions. Beginning with Astor Piazzolla’s Oblivion, the groups performance highlights not only Webber’s amazing ability to take original scores and create a compelling rhythm, hut to depict character through music that shows his way of bringing life to his playing, It would not be a Webber production without performing one of his brothers most popular songs from the popular musical Jesus Christ Superstar, “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.” The audience was really alive and hoped there was more when the performance ended. The silence was extensive and finally broken with loud applause. The applause brought Webber and the ‘çellistanbul’ quartet back on stage to perform an encore of Astor Piazolla’s Oblivion. This time when the last cord was held, the audience knew once the sound reached the atrium, the performance was truly over. A standing ovation ended a magical myriad of classical ethereal sound that was performed brilliantly.

    Classic.net      2005

    Gramophone Magazine March 1987

    A. LLOYD WEBBER (arch. Cullen). Variations for cello and orchestra

    W. S. LLOYD WEBBER. Aurora-tone poem.

    * Julian Lloyd Webber (vc); London Philharmonic Orchestra /Lorin Maazel.

    Philips digital CD 420 342-1PH; 420 342-4PH; CD 420 342-2PH (45 minutes).

    To have produced a Webber/Webber/Webber record was a splendid idea, the very different skills of the three musicians of the family (so far) contrasting well, yet also integrating well: perhaps this, in very many circumstances, is the ideal family relationship.

    1. S. Lloyd Webber started it all: his Aurora is a gentle piece about the Roman Goddess of the Dawn, of Youth and of Beauty. With this background, faithfully reproduced, you could hardly miss; and in his charming piece (Chausson, perhaps Dukas, come to mind) William does indeed come nowhere near missing.
    Andrew’s Variations-on a theme of Paganini, the expected one – reflect a similar degree of skill; even so, there are few moments when Andrew’s music could be mistaken for William’s (though perhaps there are many which would have puzzled him). As the Variations are long (a side and a hall) they should be, and indeed are, very varied. Not often out-and-out pop in style (the first recording on MCA MCL18l6, 4/78-was scored for cello and six-piece rock band), yet equally not often out-and-out classical in style; instead there are cross-currents, with the scoring giving often unusual and piquant colour (David Cullen contributing excellently here) to music which does on occasion need this help (as most lengthy pieces do in places). It is easy to enjoy the music; when these variations were the ‘Dance’ half of Andrew’s Song and Dance show many thousands of theatre-goers did so, and many of today’s record buyers stand a good chance of doing the same. The solo cello contribution to the score – approaching that of a concerto soloist yet not quite that – is played splendidly by, of course, Julian (who ends by contributing a resonant bottom A, probably the lowest note on the cello ever recorded).

    Lovers of the unusual. of course, need no recommendation: this record is self-evidently for them. Collectors of versions of Paganini’s twenty-fourth Caprice (these versions are by now a large family) also need no recommendation. (As in the case of William, some of these variations would have puzzled Paganini; few would, I think, have angered him.) And, self-evidently, automatic admirers of everything Andrew does also need no recommendation. For listeners in none of these three categories: well, perhaps, caution might be advised.

    M.M.

  • d’Indy Lied for cello and orchestra

    The Daily Telegraph 22nd March 1991

    CLASSICAL

    Saint-Saens:Cello Concerto; Allegro appassionato.

    Honegger Cello Concerto.

    Faure:Elegie.

    D’indy: Lied. Honegger Julian Lloyd Webber/ English Chamber Orchestra. Yan Pascal Tortelier (Philips 432084-2)

    Julian Lloyd Webber’s bold start to Saint-Saens’s A minor Cello Concerto similarly finds the essence of urgency in the music right away, going on to develop a mature bloom of sound in passages of quiet, lyrical yearning.

    And the “Allegro appassionato” makes a marvellous ending to his all-French disc: as if it were an encore, this is a delightful, rhythmically spicy, gypsy-inflected confection lasting only a few moments, but one in which Lloyd Webber encapsulates all its fire and ardent swooning.

    In between, he plays the perennial Faure “Elegie” with an endearing freshness of grief-laden emotion, tastefully judged, unintrusive in its expression, and in the “Lied” by Vincent d’lndy the unadorned melodic beauty (with lovely touches of orchestration) is spun out with affecting simplicity.

    Honegger’s Cello Concerto is a welcome and uncommon inclusion here. Its languorous, almost seductive opening is by no means an accurate guide as to what is to follow, for at times Honegger abruptly punctuates the flow with something altogether more angular.

    The music’s strange switches of mood from a quasi-nightclubby lilt to aggressive outbursts hint at dark undertones which the buoyant final section does not wholly dispel. Lloyd Webber is a persuasive, probing protagonist.

    Geoffrey Norris

  • Delius Cello Concerto

    The Scotsman November 2009

    Romantic Cello Concertos CD

    JULIAN LLOYD WEBBER: ROMANTIC CELLO CONCERTOS ****

    JOAQUIN Rodrigo is perhaps best known for his popular Concerto de Aranjuez for guitar, but in the 1980s – when he was in his eighties – he wrote a concerto for cellist Julian Lloyd Webber that is every bit as exotic and tuneful. Accordingly, it fits well with the title of Lloyd Webber’s latest disc, Romantic Cello Concertos, and sits easily with the lush and slithering chromaticism of Delius’s concerto and the hot-blooded romanticism of Lalo’s.

    These are a repackaging of earlier separate releases by Lloyd Webber, and so feature different orchestras and conductors. With Vernon Handley and the Philharmonia, he digs deep into the passionate soul of the Delius. With Jesus Lopez-Cobos and the London Philharmonic, the Rodrigo is by far the more perfect and invigorating performance.

  • Delius Cello Concerto

    BBC Music Magazine June 2001

    Julian Lloyd Webber plays the Delius Cello Concerto

    Works by Rodrigo, Villa-Lobos, Lalo, Saint-Saëns, Delius, etc

    Julian Lloyd Webber (cello); LPO/Jesus

    Lopez-Cobos, National PO/Charles

    Gerhardt, Philharmonia Orchestral

    Vernon Handley

    BMG marks Julian Lloyd Webber’s half-century by revisiting some of his memorable RCA recordings of the early Eighties. It’s surprising that the agreeably tuneful concerto written for him in 1979 by Joaquin Rodrigo has not been mote widely embraced by other cellists. Only now, some 19 years after its Royal Festival Hall premiere, has it found its way on to CD, though Lloyd Webber’s performance is just as magnetic as I remembered from LP days, and BMG’s new CD transfer is excellent.

    Disc 1 of this compilation also includes works by Villa-Lobos, Falla, Popper and others, and Lloyd Webber’s nobly measured account of the Lalo Concerto has a degree of purposeful gravitas that commands attentive listening. However, the British works grouped on the second disc reveal Lloyd Webber’s finest interpretative attributes, especially in a reading of the Delius Concerto that’s much the finest since du Pre’s, and arguably more plausible and engrossing for what it leaves to the imagination of the listener. Lloyd Webber’s more introspective style comes closer to capturing the fleeting spirit of the work than does du Pre’s full-on ardour, and the recording is again first class. A hearty birthday feast that’s well worth investigating.

    Michael Jameson

    PERFORMANCE ****

    SOUND ****

  • Delius Cello Concerto

    The Independent on Sunday 6th October 1996

    Julian Lloyd Webber plays Delius

    Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons Festival

    Golden Moment of the Week came in the unlikely context of Raymond Blanc’s still, sadly, token music festival at the Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons near Oxford. It opened on Tuesday with Julian Lloyd Webber and John Lenehan playing bits and pieces calculated to spoil no one’s appetite. But in the middle of them came a glorious reading of Delius’s single-movement Cello Sonata followed by a jewel-like Nocturne that could almost have passed for Ravel but was in fact an exquisite miniature by William (pere) Lloyd Webber. Delivered from the heart but with an unaffected dignity it was the most purely pleasurable cello-playing I’ve heard in ages.

    Michael White

  • Delius Cello Concerto

    Stereo Review February 1994

    Julian Lloyd Webber plays Delius

    RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT

    Performance: Eloquent Recording: Excellent

    Lili Boulanger, younger sister of Nadia, was acknowledged as an important composer when she died in 1918 in her twenty-fifth year. She produced a large body of work, and five years before her death she became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome. The seven works recorded here identify Boulanger as a composer who must have found her own voice remarkably early. Most appealing are the first two, miniature tone poems for piano trio composed in the last year of her life and rescored for orchestra before she died. The poignant D’un soir triste, at a little more than eleven minutes the longest by far of the pieces on this side, is an intensely tragic and yet remarkably subtle work, the sort of thing that creates an aural world of its own. I’d like to hear the orchestral setting, and I can’t imagine how both versions could remain for so long so completely unknown to us. The first trio piece is actually an arrangement of an aria from Boulanger’s cantata Faust el Helene, the work that won her the Prix de Rome. The next two pieces, for piano solo, and the last two, for violin and piano, are slighter and a bit less individualistic but remarkable for their sumptuous yet clear coloring.

    Delius, of course, is a much better-known composer than Lili Boulanger, but his Cello Sonata is about as unfamiliar as the Boulanger pieces recorded here. It is a lovely discovery in this eloquent, thoroughly idiomatic performance by Julian Lloyd Webber and Eric Fenby, who was Delius’s amanuensis in the composer’s final years. Here, by way of spoken preamble, Fenby reads a passage from his book Delius As I Knew Him describing a performance of the sonata at the beginning of his relationship with the composer some fifty-five years ago. The solo pieces that fill out the side are less imposing but interesting enough in their own terms. The polka, Delius’s first published work (Jacksonville, Florida, 1885), is an agreeable piece in a music-hall style.

    Both composers are extremely well served on this beautifully recorded disc, and so is the listener in being given these opportunities to acquaint himself with works of character and substance in performances that will probably stand as definitive for some time.

    R.F.

  • Delius Cello Concerto

    The New York Times 1st January 1984

    Julian Lloyd Webber plays Delius

    Young Cellist Excels in Varied Repertory

    Another young cellist who is making a considerable reputation for himself, particularly in Europe, is Julian Lloyd Webber, a British player who seems to have a special interest in conservative 20th-century music. The first of his two most recent disks features a work he commissioned in 1979, the “Concerto como un Divertimento” by the Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo. This is a slight departure for Rodrigo: While the outer movements retain the kind of Iberian folk flavor that has been an identifying hallmark of Rodrigo’s music of the last 45 years, the central movement features a simple cello melody set over a misty, delicate and almost atonal backdrop. At the center of this unusual movement, he provides an attractive cadenza that moves be¬tween plucked guitar-like figuration and bowed chords, and which seems, at its climax, to refer to the cadenza of the “Concierto dc Aranjuez,” Rodrigo’s best known work.

    The Lalo Concerto, although a 19th-century work, is a logical companion piece: Like the Rodrigo, it makes references to typically Spanish melodic materials, while demanding the kind of Romantic expressivity that the cello yields so willingly. Mr. Webber brings a fulsome tone and an understated flair to both works (British RCA RL 25420, digital; imported by International Book and Record).

    He seems even more at home, however, on his second disk, which features neglected works for cello and orchestra by Delius, Hoist and Vaughan Williams (British RCA RS 9010, digital). The Delius is, for the most part, a bright, leisurely score that abounds in sweeping pastoral writing and lovely, extended cello lines that allow Mr. Webber to display his considerable facility without seeming unduly theatrical. Hoist’s early “Invocation” gives the cellist even sweeter material, and the “Fantasia on Sussex Folk Songs,” composed for Casals, is a lush piece with a surprisingly extroverted cadenza that seems a bit incongruous amid the implicity of the folk tunes.

    Allan Kozinn

  • Delius Cello Concerto

    Gramophone June 1983

    DELIUS Cello Concerto. Holst Invocation Op.19 No.2. Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Sussex Folk Tunes.

    Julian Lloyd Webber (vlc): Philharmonia Orchestra / Vernon Handley. RCA

    Cello Concerto comparative versions: du Pre. RPO.Sargent

    From his first entry Webber makes the quality of the forthcoming performance of the concerto clear, with those awkward notes (for those first half-dozen bars Delius was obviously trying to write a ‘proper’ cello concerto) assembled into a coherent line. Partly thanks to the excellent editing of the solo part by Herbert Withers all else, too, runs smoothly, the marvellously romantic music given a natural, unexaggerated flow. Handley ensures that the orchestra matches this, and a very clear quality of recording gives soloist and orchestra alike a splendid sound. Balance, too, seems just right; and a feeling of some intimacy is conveyed; perhaps this is helped alone by using a suitably modest number of string-players. In any event this is a version of the Delius to treasure.

    So too, in its day, was of course the Jacqueline du Pre/HMV version listed above. And still there are remarkable qualities on offer: a warmly romantic reading which is in little danger of seeming exaggeratedly so unless heard immediately after the Webber; and an equally warm, romantic sound on a somewhat bigger, but not at all necessarily more suitable scale for the orchestra. But the quality of recorded sound of this older disc, once very acceptable, now seems greatly inferior to that of the new one; the strings in particular, solo and orchestral, lacking warmth and clarity.

    For coupling, that older du Pre record has the Elgar Cello Concerto. The new record’s couplings, though, are of unusual interest, offering first recordings of unfamiliar cello pieces by Hoist and Vaughan Williams. Holst’s Invocation seems to me to be a real find, not so much a romantic flow for the cello here as a coolly classical, rather ruminative exploration of the instrument’s sedater qualities as a soloist. The piece’s unusual, and very worthwhile virtues are somewhat set in sharp relief, though, by the Vaughan Williams-Fantasia on Sussex Folk Tunes, which was written in the first place for Casals (who played it, perhaps wondering at the time where on earth Sussex was!) Today its general folk-tune flavour seems, of course, characteristic enough of Vaughan Williams; but its exposition in terms of instrumental solo with orchestra does not. Nevertheless the Fantasia can hardly be rated a hardship, and here it has, as does the Holst Invocation, the great advantage of impeccable performance and the same splendid quality of recording given to the Delius. This is a very welcome issue indeed. M.M.