I had private lessons with him in 1973, travelling back and forth between London and his home in Geneva. Next, I won the Philharmonia Orchestra's Martin Musical Scholarship, which paid for me to study with Pierre Fournier, the first great cellist I'd ever heard. He then arranged for me to give its first performance, at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, just after I'd left college. The famous composer, Arthur Bliss, saw me playing a major piece for cello and orchestra by Prokofiev, and asked if I would learn his own new cello concerto. I got a very big break in my final year at college. If I'd failed to excel there, I wouldn't have known what to do with my life. There were lots of parties and student stuff going on, but I didn't take part in any of it - I couldn't allow myself that freedom. Music college was wonderful, and I studied hard. I actually sat and passed my Performance Diploma - the exam you take when you leave music college - before I even went to college. By that time I'd got a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, and I practised non-stop between then and taking up my place a year later. My family, as musicians themselves, understood what I was doing and didn't flinch when I left school at 16 with a just handful of O-levels. Homework was either done badly, or not at all. Though I was good at English and my teachers had great hopes for me, I used every spare moment to practise the cello. So, to have any chance of success, I realised I'd have to put everything else aside. I was into the cello in a big way, and having been to lots of concerts, I knew standards were incredibly high. That's when my problems with school really started. Instead, I went to University College School in Hampstead at 13. I didn't move up to the senior Westminster School, though, because they had Saturday morning lessons, and by that time I was studying in the junior department of the Royal College of Music on Saturdays. At one point we built a miniature theatre out of bricks, with a revolving, scene-changing stage made out of an old record-player turntable.Īfter Wetherby, I went to Westminster Under School - the prep school for Westminster - when I was 12. I helped him with his first musicals when I was about nine and he was 12. She lived with us and had to turn a blind eye to girlfriends - mainly Tim's - wandering round in various stages of undress.Īndrew and I got on very well and we used to play music together all the time. Later, Tim Rice came to live with us, when he was first working on musicals with Andrew, and so the whole house was full of music - a cacophony of sound. He was seven years older than me, but he stayed a long time and became a bit like a second older brother. When I was about 11, the pianist John Lill came to live with us. My mother, Jean, specialised in teaching young children the piano - but she failed completely with me. My father, William, was a composer, but when his romantic and tuneful style fell out of favour in classical circles in the 1950s, he turned to academia and taught at the Royal College of Music. Home for me and my brother, Andrew, who is three years my senior, was a very dilapidated redbrick Victorian mansion block. But his studies suffered when he fell in love with the cello Music first: Julian Lloyd Webber enjoyed his time at Wetherby, a private boy's school in West London. I went for lessons outside school hours with a lovely old lady called Alison Dalrymple, who also taught the famous cellist, Jacqueline du Pré. I thought it looked a bit like a woman, and I hoped that if I took it up I might be allowed to give up the piano, which I was terrible at. My mum took me to a concert and I saw the instrument in the orchestra. I had first discovered the cello when I was about four. I liked it there, and got on well both in class and with the other boys, but my studies suffered when I became interested in music and the cello took over my life. The school I'm dressed for was Wetherby, a private boys' school that was then near our home in South Kensington. This is me, aged five, dressed in my school uniform on the balcony of our flat in London. He has an 18-year-old son, David, from his second marriage. Comments R enowned solo cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, 59, lives in London with his fourth wife and fellow cellist Jiaxin Cheng, 34.
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