The Guardian 12th June 1998

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

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

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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

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 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 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