Classical needs the new

Julian Lloyd Webber plays the Elgar cello concerto.

Julian Lloyd Webber still hadn't seen Annie Goldson's film Elgar's Enigma when I caught up with him, but it was on his schedule. The film, which screened on Artsville on TV One on Sunday night and will be available on DVD, explores the theory that Elgar's Enigma concerto was inspired by the 1916 death of Kenneth Munro, the son of Helen Weaver, a young Worcester woman to whom Elgar was engaged in the 1880s.

"It's a plausible story," Lloyd Webber says, "although no one will ever know one way or the other. It's certainly not something to just be dismissed. It creates an interest in classical music and that's what we need. We all need to pull together and be proud of what we have to offer."

Lloyd Webber will play the concerto with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra this week, and the urbane Englishman could not be happier working with conductor James Judd.

"He's a good Elgarian, and one of those people who have taken the trouble to listen to Elgar's recordings. They're remarkably good, too, with some red-hot playing."

Lloyd Webber has a red-hot challenge in the virtuoso line on Saturday when he takes on Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations in its original version.

The Rococo Variations, reassembled by cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, "cut the last variation completely and I can see why because it's the hardest for both cello and orchestra. But it is what Tchaikovsky wrote and seems to make more sense."

It is not difficult to get Lloyd Webber fired up about the state of classical music today. "It's the way in which the media, particularly television, underestimates the interest in culture. It's something that is sidelined. Yet in the Far East you can turn on the TV in the middle of the afternoon and you're quite likely to see someone playing a piece of classical music."

Dumbing-down happens "when people pretend something is classical and it isn't. Just because musicians are classically trained, it doesn't mean when they pick up a violin that they're playing classical music."

"There is nothing wrong with people experimenting and trying to push boundaries. But when you knowingly go out and give the impression that it's classical when it isn't - that's what I don't like. You've got to be true to what you believe."

Lloyd Webber says he has no agenda against the extremities of the avant-garde; rather, he takes the side of composers such as Malcolm Arnold, William Walton and Samuel Barber, "disparaged for writing what they wanted to write".

On the contemporary front, he has been most strongly associated with the Philip Glass Concerto, which he played in Auckland four years ago.

"A lot of people find Glass' style repetitive but it works on its own terms and you have to decide whether you can get along with that or not. I have seen very bad critical reviews of his music and I think they are unfair. The critic should admit he doesn't happen to like a piece, not that it's bad music."

For Lloyd Webber, commissioning is a buzz and he wishes more musicians would get involved in putting contemporary music on the map.

"I like to play the great concertos but it's great to be part of something which might not have existed.

"This is a creative process that should be going on in music.

"Not every piece is going to be a winner and you don't know what you're going to get until you get it. But if you don't try, that's not very healthy for classical music.

"If classical music is to survive it has to be part of a living tradition."

* What: The NZSO, with Julian Lloyd Webber

* Where and when: Founders Theatre, Hamilton, Thu 8pm; Auckland Town Hall, Fri 6.30pm & Sat 8pm