Delius Cello Sonata

classicalsource.com – March 2013

Barnes Music Festival – William Lloyd Webber, Delius & John Ireland – Artists include Verter Trio, Julian Lloyd Webber & Min-Jin Kym

The Barnes Music Festival prospectus advertised this concert as being “an enchanting programme of f amiliar classics alongside lesser known works including Delius’s Cello Concerto (sic)…”, and it indicated that works by Purcell and Bax would also be played. But somewhere along the line the event turned into a celebration to mark the centenary of William Lloyd Webber, father of Andrew and Julian, whose compositions dominated the evening.

William Lloyd Webber’s Fantasy Trio, written in 1936, was a good indicator of the tone of things to come. The work is a skilfully constructed piece in one movement, recognisably in the English style of the period that will be familiar to those who know Ireland, Bax or the younger Frank Bridge. The quality of invention, while not compelling, is high enough to keep one’s attention and the Verter Trio gave a thoroughly committed performance. Three organ pieces then fell pleasantly on the ear, and after being interviewed interestingly about his father by Daniel Turner, Julian Lloyd Webber displayed his Stradivarius cello’s beautiful tone in two more miniatures by WLW.

Rebeca Omodia, a sympathetic accompanist, then entered more into the picture with Delius’s Cello Sonata. Julian Lloyd Webber is the leading exponent of this work, and has recorded it at least twice, once with the composer’s associate and amanuensis Eric Fenby. He gave a passionate, highly communicative performance.

After the interval, Omodia showed her considerable skills in sympathetic, neatly turned accounts of further W. Lloyd Webber pieces, and was then joined by the husband-and-wife cello-duo in three arrangements. Jiaxin was by no means at a disadvantage compared with her partner, and is clearly a highly skilled performer. (They have recorded this and similar repertoire for Naxos, on 8.57325.) Min-Jin Kym, who hit the headlines four years ago when her Stradivarius was stolen from her in a Euston-station cafe and then subsequently found if only recently, now uses another instrument by the same maker. With Daniel Turner, she played W. Lloyd Webber’s Benedictus.

In the final work, John Ireland’s Second Piano Trio, the Verter musicians played with great devotion and responded well to both the work’s darker elements and its virtuosic qualities. There were times when it was thought that music such as this could only be realised satisfactorily by native-born artists, and it was heartening to experience such a finely played and sympathetic performance by an Israeli pianist, a South-Korean violinist and a Chinese cellist.

Alan Sanders

Gramophone – January 2013

Gramophone Reissues – ‘The Delius Collection’ – the recordings by Eric Fenby

‘The Cello Sonata, always a difficult work to interpret and one fraught with the dangers of monotony, is brought to life beautifully by Julian Lloyd Webber’s careful shades and graded phrases.’

Jeremy Dibble

Classicalsource.com September 24, 2012

Julian Lloyd Webber & John Lenehan at Wigmore Hall – Ireland and Delius

Ireland -Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano

Delius – Caprice and Elegy, Romance, Sonata for Cello and Piano

The anniversaries of two composers and the cellist connecting them were marked in this BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert at Wigmore Hall. The 50th-anniversary of John Ireland’s death and the 150th-anniversary of the birth of Frederick Delius are relatively well documented; though it could be argued neither has properly had the coverage in concert halls that they deserve, even this year. Binding the works of the two together is the cellist Beatrice Harrison, born 120 years ago, the dedicatee of the Delius’s Sonata and his Caprice and Elegy, and who gave the first performance of Ireland’s Sonata in 1924.

Julian Lloyd Webber is a passionate advocate of both these composers, and with regular accompanist John Lenehan has a long standing familiarity with each work, and indeed discovered Delius’s Romance in 1976. This early composition from 1896 bears some similarity to the shorter works by Fauré for cello and piano, and here was given a sunny countenance and warm tone, its main melody lightly elusive but attractive.

The mood was in direct contrast to the Ireland, which initially complemented the rainstorm outside, with glowering low-register cello statements and assertive interventions from Lenehan. Gradually the gloomy mood dissipated, with a whispered aside marking the intimate second theme of the first movement, its marking of ‘secreto’ perfectly observed. Lloyd Webber’s tone throughout this was probing in the mid-register, and the high notes were completely secure as the ending of each faster movement somehow negotiated its way in to G major.

Delius’s Caprice and Elegy is from 1930 and is much more concise than the Romance, the Caprice part especially effective with its tumbling five-note motif which was given by Lenehan in a beautiful pianissimo. Lloyd Webber’s cantabile line gave the melody a light touch, and the chromatic Elegy was soft-hearted but profound.

Delius’s Cello Sonata is a single movement in three sections, each with long-breathed tunes that need to be followed from the outset, lest listeners feel they are cutting-in to the middle of a conversation. The sweeps of melody and wandering harmonies went well together in this performance, though the relative lack of fast music made the dynamic observations all the more telling. The beautiful falling theme that becomes the Sonata’s calling card was affectionately played, the piece building to a triumphant conclusion.

The appropriate encores were Ireland’s arrangement of his song The Holy Boy, followed by Lloyd Webber’s transcription of the equally well-loved Sea Fever. Both were given with obvious affection, showing that Ireland’s melodic genius is ultimately to be found in shorter form, with his longer works reserved perhaps for more personal insights.

Ben Hogwood

Music Web     December 2002

Penguin Guide to CDs

Delius Cello Sonata

Cello sonata (in one movement); 2 Pieces for

cello and piano; Romance; Hassan: Serenade.

(N) Ph. Dig. 454 458-2 [id]. Julian Lloyd

Webber, Bengt Forsberg — GRIEG: Cello sonata.***

Julian Lloyd Webber offers a most attractive coupling of 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, making it tauter than before. He is just as warmly sympathetic in the shorter pieces.

Gramophone Good CD Guide

Delius Cello Sonata. Caprice and Elegy. Hassan – Serenade (arr. Fenby). Romance.

Grieg Cello Sonata in A minor, Op. 36. Intermezzo in A minor, CW118. Julian Lloyd Webber (vc); Bengt Forsberg (pf). Philips 454 458-2PH (66 minutes: DDD: 4/98). Recorded 1996.

The links, both musical and personal, between Grieg and Delius are many, which makes this a very apt and attractive coupling, bringing together all the works each composer wrote for this medium. This is Julian Lloyd Webber’s second recording of the Delius Cello Sonata. His earlier version was made in 1981. The contrasts are fascinating. The overall duration this time is almost two minutes shorter, and the easier flow goes with a lighter manner and a less forward balance for the cello. The result in this freely lyrical single-movement structure is more persuasive, less effortful, with greater light and shade, and with just as much warmth in the playing. Lloyd Webber is splendidly matched by the playing of Bengt Forsberg, whose variety of expression and idiomatic feeling for rubato consistently match those of his partner. The Caprice and Elegy of 1930, originally dictated to Eric Fenby, much slighter pieces with obsessively repetitious phrases, inspire equally free and spontaneous performances, and it is particularly good to have the tuneful Romance of 1898, which inexplicably remained neglected for 80 years till Lloyd Webber revived it. The Grieg Sonata, too, among the most inspired and intense of his longer works, prompts magnetic playing, again with more light and shade than is common, helped by not having the cello spotlit, in a natural recording acoustic. The mystery of the very opening is intensified, and the pianissimos from both cellist and pianist are daringly extreme, especially so in the central slow movement with its haunting quotation from Grieg’s Sigurd Jorsuljar “Homage March”. The lyrical Intermezzo provides an attractive makeweight. Though a very high proportion of the music here is reflective, the meditative intensity of the playing sustains it well.

The Strad June 1998

Delius and Grieg cello music

Back

DELIUS Cello Sonata; Two Pieces; serenade from Hassan; Romance
GRIEG Cello Sonata in A minor, Intermezzo
Julian Lloyd Webber (cello),Bengt Forsberg (piano)
Philips 454 458-2

‘When I first heard Grieg,’ Delius wrote, ‘it was if a breath of mountain air had come to me.’ How true are those words in this disc, as we move from the hot-house environment of his music to the limpid beauty of Grieg’s Intermezzo and Sonata. They are a world apart, a fact made all the more obvious by Julian Lloyd Webber’s excellent performances.

The Delius Sonata (1916) is a score of intense beauty conceived as a single uninterrupted arch, and Lloyd Webber invests the music with an abundant spectrum of tone colour. Maybe his use of portamentos almost errs on the generous, yet one feels his love and affection for Delius, the soaring lines of the Caprice, the first of the Two Pieces, being a moment of erotic radiance.

For the Grieg, Lloyd Webber totally changes his approach and tone quality, the gentle lyricism of the Intermezzo perfectly captured. His view of the sonata is more introverted than normal, with rather muted moments of drama. It is a view I enjoyed, and in Bengt Forsberg Lloyd Webber has a partner who ideally complements his interpretations.
DAVID DENTON

The Strad June 1998

Delius and Grieg cello music

DELIUS Cello Sonata; Two Pieces; serenade from Hassan; Romance

GRIEG Cello Sonata in A minor, Intermezzo

Julian Lloyd Webber (cello),Bengt Forsberg (piano)

Philips 454 458-2

‘When I first heard Grieg,’ Delius wrote, ‘it was if a breath of mountain air had come to me.’ How true are those words in this disc, as we move from the hot-house environment of his music to the limpid beauty of Grieg’s Intermezzo and Sonata. They are a world apart, a fact made all the more obvious by Julian Lloyd Webber’s excellent performances.

The Delius Sonata (1916) is a score of intense beauty conceived as a single uninterrupted arch, and Lloyd Webber invests the music with an abundant spectrum of tone colour. Maybe his use of portamentos almost errs on the generous, yet one feels his love and affection for Delius, the soaring lines of the Caprice, the first of the Two Pieces, being a moment of erotic radiance.

For the Grieg, Lloyd Webber totally changes his approach and tone quality, the gentle lyricism of the Intermezzo perfectly captured. His view of the sonata is more introverted than normal, with rather muted moments of drama. It is a view I enjoyed, and in Bengt Forsberg Lloyd Webber has a partner who ideally complements his interpretations.

DAVID DENTON

BBC Music Magazine May 1998

DELIUS Cello Sonata; Two Pieces; serenade from Hassan; Romance

GRIEG Cello Sonata in A minor, Intermezzo

Julian Lloyd Webber (cello),Bengt Forsberg (piano)

Philips 454 458-2 65:43 mins

Lloyd Webber and Forsberg make an exceptionally well-matched partnership in this disc of Delius and Grieg complete works for cello and piano. It’s easy to ride roughshod over Delius’s music, but here every dynamic, nuance and subtlety of tempo is delicately accomplished. The single-movement Sonata is a particularly rewarding experience: Lloyd Webber caresses the music and plays it with passionate conviction —from the opening melody, rising richly from the reverberant lower strings, through characteristic drooping minor thirds and languid rubatos, to a wonderful, uplifting culmination.

Forsberg’s renowned excellence as a recital partner provides Lloyd Webber with a much more sympathetic accompaniment than did Eric Fenby, with whom he has also recorded the work (on Unicorn-Kanchana) — despite Fenby’s eulogy on the Sonata, printed in the booklet notes.

The Grieg Sonata too is a treat, though more fire could have gone into the climaxes of the stormy first movement. The Andante 5 treated with such reverence that Lloyd Webber gives the impression that he hardly dares play it, while the folk-inspired finale inspires confident, rhythmically precise playing from both.

The character pieces which complete the disc include the early Delius Romance (1896): this shows most clearly the influence Grieg had on the younger composer at this stage. Janet Banks

PERFORMANCE *****

SOUND *****

Gramophone April 1998

Delius and Grieg Cello Music

Delius Sonata for Cello and Piano.

Caprice and Elegy. Hassan — Serenade (arr. Fenby). Romance.

Grieg Intermezzo in A minor, CWI 18. Sonata for Cello and Piano in A minor, op. 36.

Julian Lloyd Webber (vc); Bengt Forsberg (pf).

Philips ® D 454 458-2PH (66 minutes: DDD).

The links, both musical and personal, between Grieg and Delius are many, which makes this a very apt and attractive coupling, bringing together all the works each composer wrote for this medium. This is Julian Lloyd Webber’s second recording of the Delius Cello Sonata. His earlier version — made in 1981 — was with Eric Fenby for Unicorn-Kanchana, and is coupled on CD with the three Delius violin sonatas. The contrasts are fascinating. The overall duration this time is almost two minutes shorter, and the easier flow goes with a lighter manner and a less forward balance for the cello.

The result in this freely lyrical single-movement structure is more persuasive, less effortful, with greater light and shade, and with just as much warmth in the playing. In that Lloyd Webber is splendidly matched — as he is throughout the disc — by the playing of Bengt Forsberg. best known for accompanying his compatriot, the mezzo. Anne-Sofie von Otter, not least in their Gramophone Award-winning disc of Grieg songs (DG. 6/93). Here Forsberg’s variety of expression and idiomatic feeling for rubato consistently match those of his partner. The Caprice and Elegy of 1930. originally dictated to Fenby, much slighter pieces with obsessively repetition phrases, like the Hassan Serenade, inspire equally free and spontaneous performances, and it is particularly good to have the tuneful Romance of 1898, written in Paris, which inexplicably remained neglected for 80 years till Lloyd Webber revived it.

The Grieg Sonata, too, among the most inspired and intense of his longer works, prompts magnetic playing, again with more light and shade than is common, helped by not having the cello spotlit in a natural recording acoustic. The mystery of the very opening is intensified, and the pianissimos from both cellist and pianist are daringly extreme, especially so in the central slow movement with its haunting quotation from Grieg’s Sigurd Jorsalfar “Homage March”. The lyrical Intermezzo provides an attractive makeweight. Though a very high proportion of the music here is reflective, the meditative intensity of the playing sustains it well. The booklet contains a delightful photo of Delius with Grieg and his wife as well as Halvorsen and Sinding, all playing cards.

EG

The Guardian 13th February 1998

Julian Lloyd Webber plays Delius and Grieg

Delius: Cello Sonata, Caprice and Elegy,

Serenade (Hassan), Romance; Grieg: Cello Sonata, lntermezzo

Lloyd Webber/Forsberg (Philips 454 458-2)

****

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

The Sunday Telegraph 1st February 1998

THE SUNDAY REVIEW – Critics’ Choice

Grieg/Delius Cello Sonatas etc.

Lloyd Webber/ Forsberg (Philips 454 458-2).

An intelligent pairing, since Delius loved Grieg’s music. Both composers’ cello sonatas, played with passionate advocacy by Julian Lloyd Webber and Bengt Forsberg, are untypical in that Grieg’s — a glorious work — is more tempestuous than one would expect from this lyricist and Delius’s is structurally taut. Yet both are typical in their richness of material.

Michael Kennedy

The Daily Telegraph 31st January 1998

A great double act

Grieg, Delius Complete music for cello and piano.

Lloyd Webber (cello), Forsberg (piano), (Philips 454 458-2)

GRIEG and Delius go well together. They were friends for almost a quarter of a century. Grieg it was who persuaded Delius’s father to let young Fred continue his musical studies; and, for Delius, Grieg’s music was like “a breath of mountain air”.

Neither composer wrote a great deal for cello and piano, but it is all here on this captivating disc.

Julian Lloyd Webber and Bengt Forsberg find that elusive subtlety of colouring and inflection which determine the shape, the emotional perspective and the passion of Delius’s rhapsodic one-movement Sonata; charges of amorphousness might be levelled against it, but here, played with urgency, it emerges cohesively.

In the more clear-cut structure of Grieg’s Sonata the gestures are equally heartfelt, the tonal palette broad and aptly applied, the finale’s fiery temperament communicated unstintingly.

Delius’s magically rarefied Caprice and Elegy, coupled with an early Romance, Eric Fenby’s arrangement of the. Serenade from Hassan and Grieg’s modest intermezzo, are little jewels.

Geoffrey Norris

The Observer 25th January 1998

Julian Lloyd Webber

Grieg/Delius – Complete Cello & Piano Music

Grieg, Delius Complete music for cello and piano.

Julian Lloyd Webber (cello),Bengt Forsberg (piano)

(Philips 454 458-2)

Thoughtful pairing of two composers linked by a friendship which lasted until Grieg’s death in 1907. The poetic repertoire suits Lloyd Webber’s increasingly eloquent playing. His Delius is lyrical, especially in the Serenade from Hassan. In Grieg’s fiery A minor sonata, Lloyd Webber avoid false heroics in favour of passion. Forsberg is a sinewy, sensitive accompanist.

Fiona Maddocks

The Independent 19th September 1997

Julian Lloyd Webber plays Delius

Delius Memorial Concert Wigmore Hall, London

Many composers have their quiet helpers, doing anything from filling in lax returns to sharpening pencils. For most British music lovers, however, the role of amanuensis surely conjures up just one image: that of Eric Fenby, who died earlier this year.

Image is the right word, for the abiding view – of the ailing Frederick Delius impatiently dictating his pent-up music to this young assistant – was a product of the famous Ken Russell film about the composer. As recalled in Fenby’s words in the programme of Tuesday’s Wigmore Hall memorial concert, that was also how be remembered Delius when listening to one of those late pieces, so painfully written by dictation. Music’s power as a shorthand for memory is undervalued, but surely not be Delius fans. His music, after all, unlocks the sort of nostalgic memories we never thought we had.

That seemed clear from the Cello Sonata of 1916 that began the musical partof the evening, after a moving tribute to Fenby’s work from The Delius Society’s current president, Felix Aprahamian. Its sonorous phrases reached up from the depths of the instrument’s lowest string as if made for the velvet legato of Julian Lloyd Webber. In fact, they were written for the Russian cellist Alexandre Barjansky, but Lloyd Webber was playing Barjansky’s cello, which was nearly the same thing. A heart-stopping moment that verged on the edge of sound formed the core of the slow movement. From this, the rest of the music advanced and receded.

As in the Second Violin Sonata of 1923, played in Tertis’s viola version by Philip Dukes with pianist Sonia Rahman, there was musical eloquence of a different order from the picturesque note found in the great programmatic pieces.

For those who love Delius of the “abstract” music best, this was, indeed, an ideal concert; and with Tasmin Little and Piers Lane also playing the Third Violin Sonata, there was no escaping the sense of a corpus of chamber music equal at least to Elgar’s, yet still neglected.

The Third Sonata of 1930 was Fenby’s transcription; its limpid rhythms and touches of pure Delius in the scherzo’s mono mosso were an apt memento to the amanuensis. His role as a vessel for such inspiration implied a mentality the opposite of his atheistic master’s. You could tell as much from two Fenby originals with holy words’ and themes. A set of evening canticles, though written in 1932, bore no trace of pagan Delian harmonies.

In For Music on the Eve of Palm Sunday from the same year, also superbly revived by The Elysian Singers of London, conductor Matthew Greenall, a mood of sadness was not just part of the text in question. It was a touching piece, and one that made you wonder about the price of devotion to genius.

Nicholas Williams

The Strad February 1993

Beatrice Harrison Memorial Concert – Wigmore Hall

Julian Lloyd Webber (cello)

Another English memorial took place on 9 December in a packed Wigmore Hall – Julian Lloyd Webber’s tribute to Beatrice Harrison.

Elgar’s biographer, Jerrold Northrop Moore, one of the few people still alive today who heard Beatrice play, gave an interesting address, describing Lloyd Webber as an inheritor of her style: ‘One wasn’t aware of fingers and wood – only of the music itself.’ Having heard Harrison on disc, it may be hard to view the self-effacing Webber as a descendant, but, leaving aside the glissandi and rubato of her time, he is certainly capable of revealing the music itself in an unusual way: in his performance of the Adagio from Elgar’s Concerto he exposed the structure in all its remarkable transparency and simplicity. Particularly striking was the Delius Sonata, a rhapsodic work which Webber managed to anchor, playing with unfailing beauty but not a trace of indulgence. His note on the Ireland Sonata, linking it with the novels of Arthur Machen, who wrote of ‘that strange borderland, lying somewhere between dreams and death’, threw a powerful if ominous new light over the work, and he found his most eloquent moments in the sustained, mauve-coloured phrases on D and G strings. Enormously enjoyable was Cyril Scott’s virtuosic Pastoral and Reel, for which Margaret Harrison was welcomed affectionately on stage to help John Lenehan with the accompaniment. Bridge’s Scherzetto is an encore Harrison herself would have played, and Webber attacked it with alacrity, showing that his English heritage isn’t just serious, beautiful and unsentimental.

HELEN WALLACE

Musical Times November 1983

Delius Cello Sonata and Cello Concerto with Julian Lloyd Webber

Record Reviews

Delius Cello Sonata; Three Piano Preludes; Polka?Zum Carnival.

Lili Boulanger Piano and Chamber Music. Lloyd Webber, Fenby, Parkin/Parkin, Barry Griffiths, Keith Harvey

Unicorn-Kanchana DKP 9021

The fact that in 1919 the Delius cello sonata shared a recital in Paris with some Lili Boulanger songs is excuse enough for bringing these rarities together. It’s all music of subtle distinction. Fenby introduces the Delius side by reading the account from Delius as I knew him of how he accompanied the cello concerto and sonata after his first night at Grez. One can only echo Delius’s ‘Bravo, Fenby, my boy’, and add similar commendation for Julian Lloyd Webber, who has unusual and masterly control of Delius’s ebb and flow. Eric Parkin is sensitive in the atmospheric preludes but needs a dash more irony for the honky-tonk Polka. The Boulanger pieces range from the Harmonies du soir, a transcription for piano trio of an aria from her Prix de Rome cantata of 1913 (Faust et Helens), to the sombre and acrid threnody, D’un soir triste, from the last year of her short life. The music is economical and taut, sensuously alert but controlled with fastidious judgment. The ‘nature’ titles of most of the seven works belie the cogent seriousness other manner. Nothing is facile, nothing is dull, and her interpreters make an eloquent case for music we should hear more of.

ROBERT ANDERSON

Delius Cello Concerto. Holst Invocation. Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Sussex Folk Tunes.

Lloyd Webber/Philharmonia Orchestra/Handley

RCA RS 9010

This coupling of major Delius, minor Hoist, and minimal Vaughan Williams has been imaginatively conceived and admirably carried out. Delius needs every sympathy from his performers, and from Julian Lloyd Webber he gets it. The passagework in this lovely concerto can so easily sound angular and perfunctory; here the melodic lines are beautifully shaped, and the lyrical outpouring is as eloquent as it is subtly controlled. Technical difficulties are nothing to this greatly gifted young cellist. Hoist’s Invocation of 1911 is a rarity, spare and passionate in its crystalline clarity, intriguing in its ability to look both forwards and backwards through Hoist’s output. The Vaughan Williams Fantasia had the advantage of a Casals premiere in 1930, which availed it little. The manner is bluff, and the loose-strung argument turns up little to remember. Orchestra and conductor are sensitive supporters throughout, plangent, evocative, or pedestrian where they have to be.

ROBERT ANDERSON

The Guardian 18th October 1982

Delius Cello Concerto – Fairfield Hall

Philharmonia

FEW cellists have been as enterprising as Julian Lloyd Webber in extending the concerto repertoire beyond the handful of familiar works. Often such labours have to be their own reward. But the Delius Concerto is really worth resurrecting. The first thing, however, is to forget the title. The work should be classified with those reveries, elegies and meditations which French composers love to write for solo strings. There is no dramatic or perceptible constructive development or interaction between soloist and orchestra. Instead, a sustained outpouring of lyrical melody in which closely related themes seek to merge their identities rather than to declare their independence.

The work, which calls for the smoothest and sweetest playing, suits Lloyd Webber well. The cellist-poet wanders through a forest of lush sounds and becomes part of the landscape. There are many passages where orchestra leads, with cello supplying melodic arabesques, the equivalent of passages in conventional concertos where the orchestra plays the tunes while the soloist, shows off in elaborate figurations. Take a slice of the Delius Concerto anywhere and you will get a fair sample of the whole. Rearrange your slices in random order and I doubt if most of us would be any the wiser. But Delius’s ability to sustain the mood for 20 minutes ensures that we are drawn in by the spell of the music.

Hugo Cole

The Financial Times 20th November 1980

Julian Lloyd Webber/ Delius

Julian Lloyd Webber

Along the road to celebrity, Julian Lloyd Webber has found the space and time to make a speciality of English cello music of the first half of the 20th century. The niche suits his generous tone and unabashed pharsing well; the sonatas by Ireland and Delius that made up the first half of his recital at the Wigmore Hall last night require the most committed advocacy to cohere and sustain attention.

But sumptuousness may not be all. Mr. Lloyd Webber played both sonatas superbly, yet gave us in the process a surfeit of lyrical effusion. Placed so uncomfortably close in a programme, Ireland and Deblius can seem to mimic each other’s failing: a tendency to uncontrolled soliloquy in one, a want of rhythmic firmness in the other. Ireland’s sonata may be one of most powerful pieces, unerringly thematic with a fine slow movement and splendid transition to the blustering finale (both showing Mr. Lloyd Webber at his best), but it lacks definition. In structure it hangs together more obviously than Delius’s sinigle-movement sonata, but given (as here) a sure hand with the modulations of mood and temper the Delius feigns more cogency, more finality.

The pianist for the Ireland sonata and for two short pieces by Bridge was Eric Parkin, dependable and confident, but for the Delius Mr. Lloyd Webber was joined by Eric Fenby, a pleasant, unspectacular tribute to Delius’s amanuensis. Mr. Fenby handled the predominantly chordal accompaniment to the sonata most sensitively, and was surely impressed by the scope and intelligence of the cello playing.

by Andrew Clements

The Daily Telegraph 20th November 1980

Julian Lloyd Webber plays Delius

Julian Lloyd Webber

Eric Parkin

Eric Fenby

Webber Recital

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.

The Times 20th November 1980

Julian Lloyd Webber plays Delius

WIGMORE HALL

Webber Recital

Lloyd Webber/ Parkin/Fenby

Ken Russell’s film A Sons 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

The Guardian 11th November 1980

Julian Lloyd Webber plays Britten’s Cello Suite No 3

WIGMORE HALL

Edward Greenfield

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 pro¬gramme conveyed a degree of concentration in the argu¬ment 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.

The Times June 1976

“In Mr Lloyd Webber, for the first time since Jacqueline du Pre took the Concerto and Sonata into her repertory, Delius has an eloquent exponent able to draw out the long-spanned sequential writing and make emotional rhetoric out of a style which can easily sound merely prolix.”

Gramophone March 1974

Music for Cello and Piano

Julian Lloyd Webber (cello), Clifford Benson (piano).

Bach; Solo Cello Suite No. 3 in C major, BWV1009. Boccherini: String Quintet, Op. 37 No. 7—Rondo in C major.

Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 4 in C major, op. 102 No. 1—first movement. Popper: Gavotte No. 2 in D major, Op. 23.

Saint-Saens: Allegro appasionata, Op. 43. Fauré: Elegie in C minor, Op. 24. Delius: Cello Sonata in one movement.

A welcome record on several counts. I imagine that I have been asked to comment on it because the longest single work it contains is Delius’s Sonata for cello and piano, and hearing the first-ever recording of that wonderful piece provided me with one of my major musical experiences at the age of sixteen. There have, been three other versions since then, but this is the one I prefer, and the one most worthy of a place beside that original recording by its dedicatee, Beatrice Harrison, with Harold Craxton (HMV Dl103-4, 8/26).

Setting aside any private contentment that a favourite work, still hardly known to the majority of professional cellists, should be included here among more familiar items of the cello repertoire, let me welcome the disc as a whole. What a splendid idea this “All about Music” Library seems: the “Voice of the Instrument” series has real informative and educational value. The accompanying booklet, modest though it is, gives a potted history of the instrument, a diagram showing how the cello works, and a succinct introduction to the music played. This certainly provides model examples of how to write for the cello, with the two Bourrées from Bach’s Solo Cello Suite and the first movement of Beethoven’s C major Cello Sonata representing the staple classic of the repertoire. Quite right that Popper should have his place: cello fodder, maybe, but of superior quality. The Saint-Saëns and Fauré pieces, too, have their deserved place, and, between them, the selected pieces provide scope for all kinds of cello playing: double-stopping, glissandi and harmonics are here, but I miss some typical pizzicato. Whether they seek cellistic enlightenment or not, all Delius lovers will have to acquire this record for the really beautiful and lovingly played account of the Delius Sonata. Two fine young players on the threshold of undoubtedly distinguished careers could hardly have offered a better carte de visite as proof of their musical sensitivity. And the recording has the right kind of resonance to enhance the superlative cello and piano tone they produce.

F.A.

The Times 15th December

London Debut

Julian Lloyd Webber and Clifford Benson made their first London appearance as a cello and piano duo ib Tuesday. Mr Lloyd Webber’s cello tone is full and clear, his control assured: this combination worked like a dream in the nostalgic effusion of Delius’s sonata. Beethoven’s Op 102 No2 in D demands more varied qualities; the players caught some of the slow movement’s heavenly introspection, and contributed intelligent ideas elsewhere, notably the first movement coda and the lead into the finale. They had less to say in their opening Vivaldi sonata but Brahms’s Op99 pulsed with life-blood.

The Times 15th December

London Debut

Exceptional Talent

Wigmore Hall Recital December 7th

An exceptional talent, the 20-year-old cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, made his first Wigmore Hall sonata recital last night a very distinguished affair.

An equally gifted and now well-established musician, Clifford Benson, was his partner at the piano. It was evident that their close partnership had been achieved in many collaborations, which may explain the risk they took in opening with the Vivaldi Sonata No. 5.

The rich adagio and the atheletic fugue of Beethoven’s Sonata in D major were marvellously integrated and balanced.

An expansive account of the Delius Sonata brought out the opulence of the instrument.

DAWM