Frensham Pond

Tasmin Little(violin) and John Lenehan(piano)

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A Celebration of William Lloyd Webber

Classicalsource March 2014

St Martin’s Voices

Andrew Earis (organ)

Charlotte Scott (violin), Julian Lloyd Webber (cello) & Rebeca Omordia (piano)

Nicholas Wearne (organ)

Rowan Morton Gledhill (presenter)

St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London

Tuesday, March 11, 2014 Given the fame of his two sons, Andrew and Julian, it was perhaps surprising that this celebration of their father William Lloyd Webber’s centenary, given on the day itself, was not more glitzy affair. However the understated nature of the event was wholly in keeping with the man’s character and this made the occasion all the more touching.

William Lloyd Webber (1914-1982) was one of British music’s most enigmatic composers. Possessed with a remarkable gift for melody, he felt – as the concert’s excellent presenter, Rowan Morton Gledhill, explained – “out of step” with the times and simply ceased composing for a large part of his life. W. Lloyd Webber wrote deeply romantic, heartfelt music at a time when those qualities were least valued and here we heard numerous examples of his melodic and beautifully written miniatures, ably performed by St Martin’s Voices under Andrew Earis (Director of Music at St Martin-in-the-Fields) although there were times when we might have wished for a greater range of dynamics.

Two anthems, Most Glorious Lord of Lyfe and Lo! My Shepherd is Divine, opened the concert and preceded what may well, incredibly, have been the first performance of an assured four-part song, Margery. Earis then played two short but piquant organ solos – ‘Christ in the Tomb’ from The Divine Compassion, and Trumpet Minuet – before Lloyd Webber’s younger son, cellist Julian, made the first of his two contributions to the evening. He revealed that his father had told him that In the Half Light for cello and piano depicts someone sitting by the fire late one night looking back over their life. He gave an exquisite performance, ably partnered by Rebeca Omordia. The first half ended with possibly the finest of the chosen works, the choral Missa Princeps Pacis, a beautifully crafted and proportioned composition with echoes of Fauré, performed here with delicacy.

And it was St Martin’s Voices that began the second half in rousing style with Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, followed by another part-song premiere: the simple but breathtakingly beautiful The Moon. From the organ loft, violinist Charlotte Scott and organist Nicholas Wearne (organist at St Martin-in-the-Fields) then performed the soaring Benedictus for Violin and Organ which Lloyd Webber had written to play at his own wedding service together with his violinist bride Jean. A deceptively simple piano miniature ‘Willow Song’ from the cycle Three Spring Miniatures was sensitively played by Omordia who was then again joined by Julian in the darkly romantic Nocturne. A fascinating evening concluded with ‘New Life in Christ’, the last part of the cantata, The Saviour, the Parry-like final pages of which are as thrilling and climactic as anything to be found in British choral music.

Ben Collis

American Record Guide September/October 2000

WEBBER: Sacred Choral

A Hymn of Thanksgiving; Mass, Princeps Pacis; Lo! my Shepherd is Divine; Dominus Firmamentum Meum; Mass, Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae; 0 Love, I give Myself to Thee; Tantum Ergo Sacramentum; Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in E minor; Most Glorious Lord of Life! Love Divine, all Loves Excelling; Sing the Life; The Stable where the Oxen Stood; New Life in Christ(from ‘The Saviour’).

Nicholas Luff. organ; Choir of All Saints, Margaret Street / Harry Bramma

Priory 677 (Albany) 73 minutes

Webber was well known as an organist and composer before joining the Royal College of Music in 1946 as professor of theory and composition. He was also director of the London College of Music. From 1939 to 1948, he was organist and choirmaster at All Saints Margaret Street.

Webber’s overall style is firmly fixed in the romantic era of Stanford and Vaughan Williams. But the sacred choral music displays his unique talent, in a variety of styles and moods. On the whole, these works are contemplative, as opposed to celebratory. They represent a style of church music that needs to be revisited in this country – intelligent texts coupled with glorious, well-crafted music.

The performance by the Choir of All Saints Margaret Street is magnificent. They sing with a warm blend that is not often heard in mixed English choirs. There are only 12 singers, but their sound is rich and rewarding. I could only wish for more bass voices. The sopranos sometimes overpower them.

If you like English choral music, this is a must-have.

BOND

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE (SEPTEMBER 1998)

WILLIAM LLOYD WEBBER

Invocation: Mass ‘Princeps pacis’; Serenade for Strings;

Aurora; Three Spring Miniatures; Invocation; Lento; Nocturne, etc

Tasmin Little (violin), Julian Lloyd Webber (cello), Ian Watson (organ), City of London Sinfonia/Richard Hickox

Chandos CHAN 9595 62:38 mins £ £ £

This CD comprises ten works demonstrating Lloyd Webber’s gentle, subtle melodic gift and his skill at compressing complex material, frequently employing unexpected developments, into short time spans. The Faure-like missa brevis Princeps Pacis combines all these attributes: it is a little jewel with a sublime Gloria that culminates, radiantly, at ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu…’. Tasmin Little’s sweet tones distinguish the Benedictus for violin and organ, written for the composer’s wedding service and suitably Romantic. Julian Lloyd Webber is ideally partnered by Skaila Kanga in the tender supplications of the Nocturne from his father’s oratorio St Francis of Assisi. Kanga’s sensitive playing also informs Aurora, a tone poem about the goddess of the dawn, the most impressive work here. Lloyd Webber draws a fine evocation of dawn mists, strengthening daylight and the sense of joy at a new day as well as the awesome majesty and sensuality of Aurora.

Lento is brooding and intense; its intricate and hyper-expressive harmonies echo late Mahler or early Schoenberg while the CD title piece,

Invocation, for strings, harp and timpani, is intense and romantic. Hickox is persuasive in all his items.

Ian Lace

PERFORMANCE ****

SOUND****

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 Guardian 12th June 1998

Lloyd Webber: Invocation; Aurora; lnvocataion; Serenade for Strings etc

Little/Lloyd Webber/CLS /Hickox (Chandos CHAN 9595)

****

No, not Andrew, but William Lloyd Webber, the father, demonstrating in 10 short works that he wrote tunes every bit as fluently as his son. Lloyd Webber senior, church organist and teacher, was an arch romantic at heart, whose style sets English pastoral alongside Rachmaninov-1ike surges of passion. The most ambitious piece is the symphonic poem, Aurora, which starts like Bartok as smoothed over by Vaughan Williams, then develops in a colourfully orchestrated sequence. A forthright setting of the Mass written for Westminster

Cathedral happily reconciles Roman and Anglican manners, yet all these miniatures, beautifully performed and recorded, offer music of winning openness.

Edward Greenfield

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

GRAMOPHONE September 1996

William Lloyd Webber

Sonatina for Viola and Piano Nocturne. Two Pieces for Cello and Piano Badinage de Noël. Song Without Words. Scherzo in G minor. Arabesque. Presto for Perseus. Romantic Evening. Explanation. Five Songs. Missa Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae.

John Graham-Hall. Philip Dukes (va); Julian Lloyd Webber (vc); Sophiia Rahman, John Lill, ‘Philip Ledger (pfs); Ian Watson (org); Hickox Singers / Richard Hickox.

In September 1987, Malcolm Macdonald gave a warm welcome to ASV’s debut collection devoted to the music of William Lloyd Webber (1914-82), a distinguished organ scholar, respected teacher, and father of you know who.

This latest issue adds three new items to that compilation (namely the Sonatina for viola and piano. Nocturne for cello and piano and Explanation for solo piano), yet inexplicably drops in the process the two arias for tenor and organ (“The King of love” and “Thou art the King”).ASV’s useful notes also mention, amongst other things, a Flute Sonatina and an early Fantasy Trio.

I can report that, of the three pieces entirely new to the catalogue, the fluent Sonatina struck me as the most pleasing. Composed in 1952 for the violist John Yewe Dyer, its three pithy, beautifully crafted movements contain much resourceful, attractively idiomatic writing. The wistful Nocturne for cello and piano derives from Lloyd Webber’s 1948 oratorio St Francis of Assisi, while the (undated) piano miniature entitled Explanation possesses a similar, innocent charm (it certainly fits very happily into the sequence of piano pieces here).

The five songs are really very pretty indeed (in his initial review MM rightly drew comparisons with Roger Quilter), as, indeed, are the two other cello and piano offerings, “In the half-light” (written in 1951 for a cellist friend Harvey Phillips – and who was himself later to teach Lloyd Webber’s son, Julian, at the RCM) and the “Air varie” (based on César Franck’s Tantum ergo).

That just leaves the immensely assured, five-movement Missa Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae, a substantial late work dating from 1979. Suffice to say, performances and recordings are beyond reproach.

ANDREW ACHENBACH

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