Julian Lloyd Webber

Julian Lloyd Webber
Background information
Born	(1951-04-14) 14 April 1951
Genres	classical
Occupations	cellist
Instruments	cello
Years active	1971–present day

Julian Lloyd Webber (born 14 April 1951) is a British solo cellist who has been described as the "doyen of British cellists".^[1]

Early years

Julian Lloyd Webber is the second son of the composer William Lloyd Webber and his wife Jean Johnstone (a piano teacher). He is the younger brother of the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Education

Lloyd Webber was educated at three independent schools in London: at Wetherby School, a pre-prep school in south Kensington (now in Notting Hill), followed by Westminster Under School, the junior (preparatory) school of Westminster School, near the Houses of Parliament, and then to University College School, a senior day school for boys in Hampstead.^[2] He then went to the Royal College of Music, in whose junior department he had studied as a boy, on Saturday mornings, whilst still at Westminster Under School and then University College School,^[2] and completed his studies with Pierre Fournier in Geneva in 1973.^[3]

Life and career

Lloyd Webber made his professional debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London in September 1972 when he gave the first London performance of the cello concerto by Sir Arthur Bliss.^[4]

Work

Lloyd Webber has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians, including Yehudi Menuhin, Lorin Maazel, Neville Marriner, Georg Solti and Esa-Pekka Salonen as well as Stéphane Grappelli, Elton John and Cleo Laine.

Lloyd Webber in 2013

Lloyd Webber has made many recordings, including his BRIT Award winning Elgar Cello Concerto conducted by Yehudi Menuhin (chosen as the finest ever version by BBC Music Magazine),^[5] the Dvořák Cello Concerto with Václav Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic, Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations with the London Symphony Orchestra under Maxim Shostakovich and a coupling of Britten's Cello Symphony and Walton's Cello Concerto with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, which was described by Gramophone magazine as "beyond any rival". He has also recorded several CDs of short pieces for Universal Classics including Made in England, Cello Moods, Cradle Song and English Idyll: "It would be difficult to find better performances of this kind of repertoire anywhere on records of today or yesterday or tomorrow" - Gramophone.^[6]

Lloyd Webber has given more than 50 works their premiere recordings and has inspired new compositions for cello from composers as diverse as Malcolm Arnold (Fantasy for Cello, 1986, and Cello Concerto, 1989), Joaquín Rodrigo (Concierto como un divertimento, 1982) James MacMillan (Cello Sonata No. 2, 2001), and Philip Glass (Cello Concerto, 2001). Recent concert performances have included four further works composed for Julian - Michael Nyman's Double Concerto for Cello and Saxophone on BBC Television, Gavin Bryars's Concerto in Suntory Hall, Tokyo, Philip Glass's Cello Concerto at the Beijing International Festival and Eric Whitacre's The River Cam at the Southbank Centre. His recording of the Glass concerto with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by Gerard Schwarz was released on the Orange Mountain label in September 2005.

Lloyd Webber's more recent recordings include The Art of Julian Lloyd Webber (2011), Evening Songs (2012) and A Tale of Two Cellos (2013).

Instrument

Lloyd Webber plays the Barjansky Stradivarius cello, dated c.1690.^[7]

Other

Lloyd Webber is also greatly involved in music education and formed the "Music Education Consortium" with James Galway and Evelyn Glennie in 2003. On 21 November 2007, the UK government announced an infusion of £332 million for music education which resulted from successful lobbying by the Consortium.^[8] In 2008, the British Government invited Lloyd Webber to be Chairman of its In Harmony programme which is based on the Venezuelan social programme El Sistema.^[9] The government- commissioned Henley Review of Music Education (2011) reported that “there is no doubt that they (the In Harmony projects) have delivered life-changing experiences”. In July 2011 maestro José Antonio Abreu, the founder of El Sistema in Venezuela, recognised In Harmony as part of the El Sistema worldwide network. In November 2011 the British government announced it would roll out In Harmony across England by extending funding from the Department for Education and adding funding from Arts Council England from 2012 to 2015. Lloyd Webber now Chairs the charity Sistema England.

Lloyd Webber received the Crystal Award at the World Economic Forum in 1998 and a Classic FM Red Award for outstanding services to music in 2005. He was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Music in 1994 and has received honorary doctorates from both the University of Hull and Thames Valley University.

In May 2001, he was granted the first busker's licence on the London Underground.^[10]

In May 2009, Lloyd Webber was elected President of the Elgar Society in succession to Sir Adrian Boult, Lord Menuhin (who conducted his Brit Award winning recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto) and Richard Hickox.^[11]

He is also a Vice President of the Delius Society and Patron of Music in Hospitals. He has been an ambassador for the Prince's Trust for more than twenty years and a Patron of CLIC Sargent for more than thirty years.

In September 2009 he joined the Board of Governors of the Southbank Centre.^[12] He was the Foundling Museum's Handel Fellow for 2010. He is known to be a lifelong supporter of Leyton Orient football club. Lloyd Webber was the only classical musician chosen to play at the Closing Ceremony of Olympics 2012. The composer Herbert Howells was his godfather.

Personal life

Lloyd Webber has been married four times. He married his first wife, Celia Ballantyne, a journalist, in 1974. His second marriage in 1989 to Zohra Mahmoud Ghazi, a great niece of the Afghan King Zahir Shah, produced one son, David (born 1992, Hammersmith, London).^[13] His third marriage was to the French-Algerian Kheira Bourahla. He married fellow cellist Jiaxin Cheng in 2009.^[14] and they have one daughter, Jasmine Orienta, who was born on June 14, 2011.

Recordings

Cello and orchestra recordings

• Frank Bridge - Oration (1976)
• Édouard Lalo - Cello Concerto (1982)
• Frederick Delius - Cello Concerto (1982)
• Joaquín Rodrigo - Concierto como un divertimento (1982)
• Joseph Haydn - Cello Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 (1983)
• Edward Elgar - Cello Concerto (1985)
• Victor Herbert - Cello Concerto No. 2 (1986)
• Arthur Sullivan - Cello Concerto (1986)
• Antonín Dvořák - Cello Concerto (1988)
• Arthur Honegger - Cello Concerto (1990)
• Camille Saint-Saëns - Cello Concerto No. 1 (1990)
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Variations on a Rococo Theme (1991)
• Nikolai Myaskovsky - Cello Concerto (1991)
• Gavin Bryars - Cello Concerto (1994)
• Benjamin Britten - Cello Symphony (1995)
• William Walton - Cello Concerto (1995)
• Michael Nyman - Concerto for Cello, Saxophone and orchestra (1996)
• Max Bruch - Kol Nidrei (1998)
• Granville Bantock - Sapphic Poem (1999)
• Philip Glass - Cello Concerto No. 1 (Glass) (2003)
• Andrew Lloyd Webber - Phantasia for violin, cello and orchestra (2004)
• Romantic Cello Concertos (2009)
• Eric Whitacre - "The River Cam" (2012)

Cello and piano recordings

• Peter Racine Fricker - Cello Sonata (1976)
• John Ireland - Complete Piano Trios (1976)
• Andrew Lloyd Webber - Variations (1977)
• Benjamin Britten - Third Suite for Cello (1979)
• Claude Debussy- Cello Sonata (1979)
• John Ireland - Cello Sonata (1979)
• Sergei Rachmaninoff - Cello Sonata (1979)
• Malcolm Arnold - Fantasy for Cello (1986)
• Alan Rawsthorne - Cello Sonata (1986)
• Benjamin Britten - Cello Sonata (1988)
• Sergei Prokofiev - Ballade (1988)
• Dmitri Shostakovich - Cello Sonata (1988)
• Gabriel Fauré - Elegie (1990)
• Charles Villiers Stanford - Cello Sonata No. 2 (1991)
• Frederick Delius - Caprice and Elegy (1993)
• Gustav Holst - Invocation (1993)
• Edvard Grieg - Cello Sonata (1995)
• Delius - Cello Sonata (1995)

Semi-classical

• Oasis, with Peter Skellern and Mary Hopkin (1984)
• Two Worlds, with Lee Ritenour and Dave Grusin (2000)

Collections

• Travels with my Cello (1984)
• Pieces (1985)
• Encore! – Travels with my Cello Vol.2 (1986)
• Cello Song (1993)
• English Idyll (1994)
• Cradle Song (1995)
• Cello Moods (1998)
• Elegy (1999)
• Lloyd Webber Plays Lloyd Webber (2001)
• Celebration (2001)
• Made in England (2003)
• Unexpected Songs (2006)
• Romantic Cello Concertos (2009)
• Fair Albion - Music by Patrick Hawes (2009)
• The Art of Julian Lloyd Webber (2011)
• Evening Songs (2012)
• A Tale of Two Cellos (2013)

First performances by Lloyd Webber

References

Further reading

• Travels with My Cello, Julian Lloyd Webber, Pavilion Books Limited, London (1984). ISBN 0-907516-27-0
• Julian Lloyd Webber: Married to Music. The Authorised Biography, Margaret Campbell, Robson Books, London (2001). ISBN 1-86105-400-9.
• Song of the Birds. Sayings, Stories and Impressions of Pablo Casals, Compiled, Edited and with a Foreword by Julian Lloyd Webber, Robson Books, London (1985). ISBN 0-86051-305-X

External links

• Official website
• Management Website
• Arioso by J S Bach performed by Julian Lloyd Webber
• Performance of Fauré's Elegy
• Performance of Elgar's Cello Concerto 3rd Movement
• Sistema England
• Elgar Society site