![]() ![]() One time he even had an electric organ in the house, so all of this noise would be reeling out of our tiny flat. Then I`d be practicing my cello, and my father would be playing this piano he actually had fitted up with pedals, just like an organ. ![]() ''Andrew would be buying rock records, and I`d be buying cello discs. With one composer and two musical children in the house, the Lloyd Webber flat in London was ever ''filled with terrible noise,'' Julian says. ''You see, he would never push his music at all,'' says Julian, who is determined to make up for that now. ''What we`re hoping to do is give a different view of his music, because I think the only thing people know of his work so far, if they know anything at all, is `Aurora.` ''And then there are some piano pieces from songs, and there are a couple of little pieces for cello and piano. It was the first major piece he had written for a long, long time. ''The main piece on the record is a Mass he wrote very late in his life, shortly before he died. Of course, we hope it will reach the United States. We`ve masterminded a recording devoted to his music, and we hope to have it out in England sometime this month. ''But Andrew and I are carrying on the cause. It was something that you just didn`t talk to him about. Andrew and I both found it very difficult to talk to father about his music because he felt saddened that more had not happened for him. ''Before he died in 1982, he had seen me become relatively successful and Andrew become phenomenally successful, but his life remained a very sad thing. People are listening to all kinds of different music. ''I think it`s a great pity because if he really had kept at it his music might have succeeded, especially now that the climate has changed so much He was writing ultraromantic music at a time when avant-garde music was considered the rage, and the musical world pretty much ignored him. ''I find Father`s music extremely beautiful,'' says Julian, ''but, alas, in his life he became very disillusioned with it. That touch, apparently, was in the genes, for Julian`s ''Variations'' LP also holds a radiant piece, ''Aurora,'' by Andrew and Julian`s father, William, a forgotten composer whose music has become one of their passions. Naturally, with Andrew`s touch, it was a hit.'' They did actually win, and his forfeit was that he had to write a piece we had been talking about for a long time. ''Of course, being a more loyal supporter than Andrew, I had to accept the bet. Last year they had to win their final match, otherwise they would go down another division, and Andrew bet me that they couldn`t manage to do this. ''You see, we both support a really terrible football team in London called Orient. ''Yes, the stories are true: The piece came about as a result of a bet,'' says Julian, winding up for what he knows will sound like a whopper but swears is true. ![]() How Julian persuaded Andrew to write this unusual piece, which applies jazzy variations to a famous highbrow tune by Paganini, likely will remain one of the more amusing anecdotes in recent music history. ''Variations'' for cello and orchestra written for him by Andrew and first performed as part of Andrew`s recent hit musical, ''Song and Dance.'' Such was the force of Julian`s conviction that the blind composer, then 79, promptly went to work. He even had the audacity six years ago to ask the grand old man of the guitar, Joaquin Rodrigo (whose ''Concierto de Aranjuez'' is one of the most beloved guitar concertos in the repertoire) to write a cello concerto for him, although Rodrigo had not so much as heard of the other Lloyd Webber. He has performed with such eminent musicians as Georg Solti and Yehudi Menuhin and, at 36, he has released several recordings of rarely performed repertoire, including works by Arthur Sullivan and Benjamin Britten that might be collecting dust on library shelves were it not for him. ![]() ''Furthermore, a lot of people think Andrew has helped me financially, and I find that very annoying because we have no contact in that way whatsoever.'' It`s no small wonder, then, that despite his brother`s international success, Julian is emerging as a star in his own right, having accrued a reputation as one of the concert world`s more engaging and intellectually probing cellists. ![]()
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