| Julian Lloyd Webber |
| Background information |
| Born |
14 April 1951 (1951-04-14) (age 56) |
| Occupation(s) |
Cellist |
Julian Lloyd Webber (born April 14, 1951) is a British
cellist.
He is the son of the composer William Lloyd Webber
(some of whose pieces for cello he has recorded) and the younger
brother of Andrew Lloyd Webber. The two
brothers collaborated on the classical/rock recording Variations
— based on Paganini's A minor Caprice
for solo violin.
Life and work
Julian Lloyd Webber was a scholar at the Royal College of Music London
and completed his studies with Pierre Fournier in Geneva.
Lloyd Webber has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians
from Yehudi Menuhin, Lorin
Maazel, Neville Marriner , Georg
Solti and Esa-Pekka Salonen to Stephane
Grappelli, Elton John and Cleo Laine.
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), the Dvořák Cello Concerto with Vaclav
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
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, and Cradle Song: "It would be difficult to
find better performances of this kind of repertoire anywhere on records
of today or yesterday" - Gramophone.
Lloyd Webber has given more than fifty works their premiere
recordings and has inspired new compositions for cello from composers
as diverse as Malcolm Arnold and Joaquín
Rodrigo to James MacMillan and Philip
Glass. Recent concert performances have included three 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
and Philip
Glass's Concerto at the Beijing International Festival. His recording
of the Glass concerto with the Royal Liverpool
Philharmonic conducted by Gerard Schwarz was released on the
Orange Mountain label in September 2004.
Lloyd Webber’s recording, Phantasia,
is based on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom
of the Opera and features violinist Sarah
Chang. A recent EMI disc, Unexpected Songs, which
included collaborations with harpist Catrin
Finch and singer Michael Ball was released in
June 2006.
Julian Lloyd Webber has also been greatly involved in music
education and formed the 'Music Education Consortium' with James
Galway and Evelyn Glennie in 2004.
Julian is also a composer and three of his compositions are
featured on his best of CD Made in England. This most famous of his
pieces is Jackie's Song for cello and strings written as a tribute to Jacqueline
du Pré. His other works Song for Baba and Kiera's are less
played and more simply scored.
Julian Lloyd Webber plays the ‘Barjansky’ Stradivarius
cello of c.1690.
External links
