Bliss Cello Concerto

I missed the work of the third Icelandic composer, Atli Heimir Sveinsson’s Together with you, being tempted to slip into the Elizabeth Hall next door for the first London performance of Bliss’s Cello Concerto, written for Rostropovich, first heard at Aldeburgh two years ago. The performers this time were the gifted young English cellist Julian Lloyd Webber and the Chanticleer Orchestra under Ruth Gipps. Originally the work was modestly described as a concertino, but it deserves the grander title, consisting as it does of three full-scale movements, whose contents fall easily on the ear and whose mood recalls that of the Walton Cello Concerto. So far as one could judge from a shy and tentative orchestral performance, Bliss has scored richly but with fastidious care not to drown the soloist—Mr Lloyd Webber produced a lovely, singing tone, and a fine breadth of phrase. Why it has not been heard before in London is a mystery—but even fewer cello concertos than cellists are box office draws.
RONALD CRICHTON