Julian Lloyd Weber - Herbert, Elgar, Sullivan

I waded back into the classical music pool yesterday, and i'm just not in the mood for modern day songs about our ongoing world war two reenactment. So here's an obscure recording from 1986 of pieces written well before things like bombing other countries were even possible.

What's Andrew Lloyd Weber's little brother have to say? Quite a lot actually, because these were some impressively obscure pieces at the time. Victor Herbert actually played his own premier of his second cello concerto, then wrote some super famous operettas that completely overshadowed his other stuff, Elgar wrote a Romance for a bassoonist friend (and also made a cello version that no one ever heard until Webber's performance of it in 1985), and you know how common bassoon solos are.... Then there's the obscurest of all, Arthur Sullivan's mostly incinerated cello concerto. Julian and friends had to reconstruct it from 2 surviving copies of the cello part, and Charles Mackerras's memory of conducting it back in 1953.

This record is actually worth double digits according to discogs and ebay, and my copy is i'd say very good. Not that i want to sell it. I want to listen to it. He's really good, and these three pieces are quite lovely, even if their respective composers abandoned them for much more entertaining and lucrative things (their opinions, not mine). No, i'd go further. These are great pieces of music written around the turn of the 20th century by composers in the midst of trying really hard to learn how to write great music. That means they weren't just slapping down habitual tropes and phrases that they already knew would work. They're trying out big ideas, and working hard to make them sound awesome. Herbert's concerto inspired Dvorak to run backstage, give him a hug, then scamper off to write his own cello concerto. Elgar's writing a solo for his actual friend, and Sullivan is trying to be Mendelssohn 'cause he hasn't met Gilbert yet.

The album itself isn't on youtube, but i'm pretty sure videos of Julian Lloyd Webber performing the pieces are, and they are definitely worth checking out.

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