The Sunday Times 23rd September 1998

WILLIAM LLOYD WEBBER: Piano music, chamber music and songs

The Nash Ensemble, John Mark Ainsley,

Ian Brown Hyperion CDA67008

WILLIAM Lloyd Webber, father of Andrew and Julian, was no radical. Though he only died in 1982, his music inhabits the world of Gurney and Ireland, half a century before. But these modest miniatures reveal a composer who was able, not only to invent memorable ideas, but to do some artful things with them, for instance in the Variations for Clarinet and Piano. Conspicuously Ireland- like titles such as Frensham Pond evoke a summery idyllic mood. The eight songs, setting texts by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Noyes et al, and beautifully delivered by John Mark Ainsley, are likewise warm romantic visions of bliss, though the 12-minute Fantasy Trio is a cogently argued essay that suggests a probing, organised mind.

Stephen Pettitt

William Lloyd Webber – THE ORGAN (September 1998)

Invocation

WILLIAM LLOYD WEBBER: Invocation

Soloists / Westminster Singers I City of London Sinfonia I Richard Hickox

CHANDOS CHAN9595 62.38

For church music enthusiasts growing up in the 30s and 40s William Lloyd Webber was an ideal role model. Doctored by examination at the age of 24 by London University his prowess as organist, choir trainer and teacher quickly aroused national recognition, which was greatly enhanced when his compositions appeared. For some strange reason all that promise was only partially fulfilled, despite the quality and individuality of his compositions, and no room was found for him in the New Grove’s twenty volumes. Seldom have I been given a CD to review which provided such unexpected delight.

The Serenade for Strings is a work of rare beauty, whilst the invocation sounds a fiercer note. There is more than a post-Mahler hint in the Lento in E for strings, and the symphonic poem Aurora presents complex musical thinking in splendidly lucid textures. As for the Missa Brevis Princeps Pacis, I would like to send every Cathedral organist a copy. It is a scandal that, so far as I’ve been able to discover, none of WSLW’s music currently adorns any Cathedral music list. Performances and recording are excellent.

DW

The Sunday Telegraph 7th June 1998

THE SUNDAY REVIEW

Critics’ Choice

William Lloyd Webber: Invocation, Serenade, Aurora, etc.

Westminster Singers, City of London Sinfonia/Hickox (Chandos CHAN 9595).

Father of Julian and Andrew, William Lloyd Webber gave up composition because his music was out of fashion in that ghastly 1955-70 period when serialism was shoved down our throats by the BBC and the academic establishment. He had not the genius of Britten and Walton which would have enabled him to ‘thumb his nose’ at the fashion-dictators and his final years were sad. The 10 works on this disc show him to have been a composer of distinctive quality who could rise to ecstatic heights.

Invocation for strings, harp and timpani has something of Elgar’s Sospiri, whereas the Lento for Strings is altogether more middle- European in its angst. The cello Nocturne, played by Julian Lloyd Webber and John Lill and the Benedictus, with Tasmin Little solo violinist, link sacred and secular. The most moving and lovely of the choral pieces is Princeps Pacis, a short mass written for Westminster Cathedral choir in 1962 and worthy to rank with Britten’s. Chandos deserve our thanks for bringing this beautiful music back into circulation.

Michael Kennedy

THE STRAD September 1996

MUSIC REVIEW

Father of two illustrious musicians, Andrew and Julian, William Lloyd Webber was himself a remarkable composer whose poised, abundantly lyrical works have returned to favour after many years of unwarranted neglect. The composer himself tended to consider his works too Romantic compared with his contemporaries, yet this is exactly why his music has such appeal to today’s audiences. The Viola Sonatina, written at the height of his powers (1951), displays the essential qualities of his style. Though its flavour of Celtic Romanticism recalls the works of Bax and Ireland, it also displays a wealth of soaring, highly charged melody that clearly reveals Lloyd Webber’s lifelong admiration for the music of Rachmaninov. This Sonatina should prove an irresistible attraction to many viola players.

Robin De Smet

THE STRAD June 1995

Jullian Lloyd Webber (cello) Jane Atkins (viola) John Lill (piano)

John Graham Hall (tenor) Andrew West (piano)

Purcell Room, London

Composer William Lloyd Webber had the misfortune to he born perhaps 40 years too late in 1914. Influenced by Rachmaninov and Franck, his music was sufficiently at odds with the prevailing mood of the mid-2Oth century for him to keep his scores private and to abandon all composition for two decades until shortly before his death in 1982. However, London’s Purcell Room was packed for a lunchtime concert of his piano and chamber music (9 February).

The most substantial work was the three-movement Viola Sonatina, receiving its first public performance. Given the paucity of repertoire for the instrument, violists should seize on it with delight. The first movement is full of half-finished, questioning phrases, while the second has a gorgeous melody exploiting the distinctive tone quality of the viola and the third is a controlled yet jovial expression of good humour with a wide-ranging but always assured tonality. Jane Atkins’ enjoyment of the music was infectious, if you could ignore her distracting body movements.

Two pieces for cello and piano further demonstrated the composer’s melodic gift. In the Half-Light has long, singing lines with an improvisational feel, and is very much a duet of equal instruments; Nocturne gives a clue to the composer’s own instrument: the music has an organist’s sense of dignity and restrained power. Sorrowful but not despondent, it is perhaps closest to Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ in spirit. Julian Lloyd Webber, the composer’s younger son, obviously feels particularly close to these works; his performance with pianist John Lill, an old friend of the Lloyd Webber family, was deeply felt.

JOANNA PIETERS