BBC Music Magazine July 1996

WILLIAM LLOYD WEBBER

Sonatina for Viola and Piano; Nocturne; Two Pieces for Cello and Piano; Missa Sanctae Mariae

Magdalenae; Seven Pieces for Piano; Five Songs for Tenor and Piano

Philip Dukes (viola), Ian Watson

(organ), Julian Lloyd Webber (cello), John Graham-Hall (tenor), Sophia

Rahman, John Lill, Philip Ledger (piano); Richard Hickox Singers!

Richard Hickox

ASVCDDCA961 DDD

59:16 mins V939

The shy, retiring father of Andrew and Julian, William Lloyd Webber composed in many different forms, mostly from 1945 to the mid-Fifties, when he abandoned composition for teaching because he felt his Romantic style was outdated. His music is accessible and concise. Indeed, it is remarkable how much material and development is so comfortably spaced in his melodic, eight-minute Sonatina for viola and piano. All the artists featured on this CD perform with conviction and devotion. Julian Lloyd Webber’s and John Lill’s contributions are particularly moving, especially the beautiful Nocturne and ‘In the half-light’ (the first of the Two Pieces) — a brief, intense portrait of an elderly person surveying his life. Much is derivative, often deliberately, to fit a commission. The light Seven Pieces for Piano, are pure delight in Lill’s hands; three are written in homage to Rachmaninov, and ‘Romantic Evening’ and ‘Explanation’ remind one of Noel Coward and Ivor Novello.

The songs are somewhat uneven, but John Graham-Hall conveys a delicate mix of joy and sadness as he sees his love rushing ‘Over the Bridge’ to meet him. The Mass shows impressive contrapuntal craftsmanship and the Hickox Singers display great precision and clarity. Delightful, undemanding music that grows on you.

IAN LACE

PERFORMANCE

SOUND ****

EVENING STANDARD ‘ES’ MAGAZINE 26th July 1996

CD CHOICE – WILLIAM LLOYD WEBBER

Selected chamber works, five songs for tenor and piano,

Missa Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae Philip Dukes (viola), John Lill (piano), Julian Lloyd Webber, (cello), John Graham-Hall (tenor) Richard Hickox Singers, conducted by Richard Hickox ASV CD DCA 961

The name Lloyd Webber has the power to send even the most reasoned of folk into reels of scoffing paroxysm. We have to face it though, Andrew is the most successful composer alive and Julian is justly regarded as one of the most accomplished of modern classical cellists But what of the august creator of their beings? William Lloyd Webber (1914-1982) was not a particularly successful composer in his lifetime and although he studied with Vaughan Williams his income was derived mainly from his work as art organist and teacher. Now he is revealed to be a composer of lyrical pastoral and virtuosic talent whose delightful Viola Sonatina, Arabesque and Scherzo for solo piano prove to be highlights of a summery mixed recital of ear-opening musical trouves.

ALEXANDER WAUGH

The Daily Telegraph 2nd November 1995

His own place in his own time

EACH Thursday between now and early December, a series of lunchtime concerts at the Purcell Room is exploring the music of William Lloyd Webber, father of Julian and Andrew.

During his lifetime (1914-82), he was best known as an organist and administrator (he was head of the London College of Music for many years). But he was also a closet composer, one who never had the self-confidence to push his own music and whose style became old-fashioned. It is only in our pluralistic times that his music is coming into its own.

This concert series includes three world premières, the first of them, a Fantasy-Trio in B minor, given by the Solomon Piano Trio at this first recital. It was written in 1936, when Lloyd Webber was 22. Its style is utterly of its period, reminiscent of Bax and Ireland, and, in its harmonic writing, owing a debt to French music. Distinctly personal, though, are the yearning, rhythmically driven melodies for the violin and cello and individually chromatic chord progressions for the piano. It is barely 10 minutes in length but it would make an attractive addition to any trio’s repertoire.

The playing of pianist Daniel Adni, violinist Rodney Friend and cellist Raphael Sommer was warm and sympathetic, catching that certain glow of a forgotten age of English music.

Either side came Haydn and Mendelssohn. Haydn’s Gypsy Rondo Trio was dogged in its early parts by Friend’s rather scratchy playing and unevenness of phrasing, but the finale caught fire splendidly. Mendelssohn’s Trio No 1 in F minor was treated to an equally full-blooded performance.

MATTHEW RYE

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

The Daily Telegraph 17th August 1987

Lloyd Webber, Mass; Two Arias – for Tenor and Organ; Two Pieces for Cello and Piano; piano pieces and songs.

Richard Hickox Singers/John Graham- Hall/John Lill/Ian Watson/Philip Ledger/Julian Lloyd Webber.

ASV CD DCA 584

There is more than a hint of Rachmaninov in the piano music of William Lloyd Webber, whose works are now being rediscovered after some years of being outstripped in popularity by those of his son, Andrew. There is some beautiful, deeply- felt writing in, say, “Romantic Evening”, affectingly played by John Lill.

In the song-writing, too, William Lloyd Webber’s romantically turned melodies carry the words perfectly, although John Graham-Hall’s tenor sounds under strain in the upper registers, and the effect is marred.

William Lloyd Webber was known in his day chiefly as a brilliant organist and church musician, and this record includes several of his devotional pieces. The two tenor arias from his cantatas “The Saviour” and ‘The Divine Compassion” might be a touch untuous for some tastes (certainly mine).

But the “Missa Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae” is more controlled and at the same time resourcefully conceived, with (as in the secular songs) an instinctive feel for words and for choral colouring.

It is, for the most part, unaccompanied, but the organ bursts in dramatically a few bars into the. Gloria and thereafter is used as a striking expressive force at key points.

Geoffrey Norris

MUSIC & MUSICIANS, FEBRUARY 1987

RECORDS OF THE MONTH

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: Variations on a Theme of Paganini for cello and orchestra

W.S. LLOYD WEBBER: Aurora – Symphonic Poem for Orchestra

Julian Lloyd Webber, cello/London Philharmonic Orchestra/Lorin Maazel, conductor ***philips 420 342-1 (LP)-2(CD)-4(MC)

Many music-lovers (though not primarily classical ones) will be familiar with the larger work on this album, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Variations’ – in the original version for cello and rock ensemble, and many more will know at least part of it from the use of one of the variations as the theme tune for the London Weekend Television arts programme ‘The South Bank Show’. Andrew Lloyd Webber is not a composer to waste material: this original version formed the ‘Dance’ part of the theatrical evening ‘Song and Dance’.

The new album follows closely upon the premiere of the most recent of the three guises of the work, as a concert item, now orchestrated for full symphony orchestra as an extended set of symphonic variations. It confirms a number of things: first, that the comparative artistic failure of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Requiem’ was an unfortunate aberration; secondly, and much more importantly, that the composer is greatly gifted indeed and in this eminently worth-while and utterly convincing orchestration he has added an important contemporary concertante piece for cello and orchestra to a still-thin repertoire, a piece that, if there is justice in contemporary music-making, should be taken up by many cellists and orchestras all over the world. In this new guise ‘Variations’ is a spendid composition; one is continually amazed at how a genuinely creative composer can mine a seam that Schumann, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Lutoslawski and Blacher (among others) had already fully explored before, and doing so on an extensive (36’ approx) scale. Julian Lloyd Webber plays brilliantly: he clearly believes in his brother’s piece, written for him of course, and gives a staggering performance. In this he is handsomely abetted by Maazel and the LPO, who follow him like a cat. They play it for all it is worth – dazzling, beautiful, sentimental, hard and glistening by turns and the result in such a splendidly balanced recording is a triumphant success.

As if ‘Variations’ was not enough, the record is completed by the first recording of the one major orchestral work by the brothers’ father, William Lloyd Webber, who died in 1982 aged 68. ‘Aurora’ is a difficult work to pin-point in style: English, certainly, but not at all derivative, although echoes may be traced of Bax, Ireland and Moeran. It shows that W.S. Lloyd Webber (of whom I had previously thought as an eminently respectable composer of Methodist Easter cantatas, and not much else) was an artist of no mean achievement. Maazel directs a performance of committed character; whilst he is in an English music frame of mind, dare one suggest a VW 4, a Billy Budd, or a Walton 1?

In any event, this album will surprise and delight many people: it deserves to be greatly successful.

ROBERT MATTHEW—WALKER