Julian Lloyd Webber
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Julian Lloyd Webber | ||
|---|---|---|
| Background information | ||
| Born | 14 April 1951 (age 55) | |
| 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.
[edit] 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 Lloyd Webber plays the ‘Barjansky’ Stradivarius cello of c.1690.
