CRITICS’CHOICE
ENGLISH IDYLL
Lloyd Webber, Academy of St Martin’s/ Marriner.
Julian Lloyd Webber is in persuasive form for this pleasant selection of short English works for cello and orchestra or piano, several of them associated with the cellist Beatrice Harrison, the Elgar concerto’s first and one of its finest exponents. Some of the pieces are arrangements. The Vaughan Williams Romance, for instance, is the slow movement of his Tuba Concerto (arranged by the composer), and it sounds even more smoothly lyrical on a stringed instrument.
Of two Elgar pieces, the Romance is also the composer’s transcription for cello of a work he conceived for bassoon. A Pastoral and Reel, written for Harrison by Cyril Scott, is a curiosity that requires panache to bring it off. Holst’s Invocation is one of his warmest and most melodic pieces, and there are items by Dyson and Grainger, plus two of the works the incapacitated Delius composed in 1930 with Eric Fenby’s co-operation. Lovely performances.
MICHAEL KENNEDY
