Arts Diary: Superstars provide a summer dream.

Byline: GLYN MON HUGHES

IT must have been a concert planner's dream. To find Emma Johnson, Julian Lloyd Webber and John Lill all free on the same night and able to come to Chester Summer Music.

All three international soloists who, surely, command superstar status, were on return trips to the city, testament -- if nothing else -- to the fact that the festival is one of the UK's prime summer dates.

They brought with them an intriguing programme, too.

Lloyd Webber played two sublime works by his late father, William. The Nocturne for cello and piano was a beautiful, rhapsodic elegy with luxuriant harmonies tinged with typical English wistfulness.

The same could be said of his piece In the Half-Light, a work which similarly searches the soul. It apparently depicts someone sitting alone in the night-time, staring into the fire and meditating on his past life.

Similarly intense was James MacMillan's Kiss on Wood, again for cello and piano. This piece, like so many of the other MacMillan pieces played over the past week in Chester, fuses old and new voices.

Here he's paraphrased the Good Friday versicle Ecce lignum crucis -- See the wood of the Cross.

Here the cello seemed to be the solo voice crying in anguish while the piano added the interest, dying away practically to nothing.

Emma Johnson's performance of the Weber Grand Duo Concertant in E flat was a blaze of virtuosity. The opening movement combined lyricism with fast, buzzing scales. It was a fantastic burst of energy which contrasted hugely with the dolorous, rather heavy slow movement. That was short lived, though, and the light, frothy finale -- which didn't seem to know how to end -- proved popular.

The real meat of the concert came in Beethoven's B flat major Clarinet Trio and the Brahms A minor Trio.

The Beethoven opened with the composer in a jocular frame of mind, tempered with some serious overtones. There was a highly reassured adagio with clarinet and cello making some magical entries while the final set of variations were ever inventive.

The Brahms opened in a rather sombre way but soon melted into a delicious adagio and gentle andantino. The finale gathered pace ending in total triumph for the trio. John Lill, ever the expert pianist, proved an invaluable asset to what was a quite brilliant concert, the sort of occasion which is rarely repeated.

CAPTION(S):

Julian Lloyd Webber, one of the top trio