Delius: Cello Sonata, Caprice and Elegy,
Serenade (Hassan), Romance; Grieg: Cello Sonata, lntermezzo
Lloyd Webber/Forsberg (Philips 454 458-2)
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Julian Lloyd Webber has had the attractive idea of offering, in coupling, the complete cello and piano music of both Delius and Grieg, composers closely linked both in musical style and as personal friends. Since he last recorded the Delius Cello Sonata — for Unicorn in 1981 — Lloyd Webber has refined and deepened his reading, now tauter than before in a single-movement work which can seem to sprawl. The Grieg Sonata, too, prompts magnetic playing. The pianissimos from both cellist and pianist are daringly extreme, magically so in the central slow movement with its haunting quotation from Grieg’s Homage March.

Edward Greenfield