Julian Lloyd Webber creates classical sparks

Julian Lloyd Webber is known for stirring up controversy back in Britain. But in New Zealand, we just love him, writes HEATH LEES.

It's getting to be a habit. Every 24 months cellist Julian Lloyd Webber steps off the plane from Britain, plays a few dazzling concerts with the Auckland Philharmonia and then disappears back home trailing clouds of glory.

Perhaps surprisingly, he seems to get as much out of it as Auckland music fans do. "I enjoy New Zealand. You pay more attention to performers, and you even give us exposure in your media."

Doesn't this happen in Britain? "Hardly," says Lloyd Webber. "I became unpopular a few years ago when I berated the press and TV for ignoring classical music and covering only the easiest popular stuff."

Memory stirs. Lloyd Webber had not just waded into the press, but pilloried composers as well for being too "academic" in the face of a colourful pop world which, he said, had grabbed the whole market.

But those in the firing line had quickly pointed out that Julian's famous brother Andrew Lloyd Webber, composer of innumerable mega-hits, had been doing all right for the Lloyd Webber clan in the business of popular music. Cellist Julian had held his ground, and to his eternal credit, studiously avoided making his brother's different aims an issue in public.

Whatever their thoughts about separate muses, all was forgiven last year when Julian hit 50 and they held a big concert in London's Albert Hall. "For the first time, Andrew came onstage with me and we played together. Everyone loved it, and the two of us felt really good about it too."

Since his last time here, Julian Lloyd Webber has been on a roll, especially last year. As well as turning 50, he got himself happily remarried, and created a series of musical firsts when he went to China mid-year, and premiered a new concerto written specially for him by Philip Glass, one of America's best-known composers.

"I haven't played the work since then, but it's on the Auckland Philharmonia's programme on April 11, so it'll be its second public performance.

"You might not think of Glass as a cello composer - he's so much associated with today's minimalist school - but I love the piece he's written, especially its rhythmic vigour."

Lloyd Webber groans at the mention of a press photo of him busking. "They asked me because they were trying to make busking official with a few 'licensed' performers. I agreed immediately; I'll do anything within reason to help puncture the stuffy image that classical music still seems to get."

For him, all projects have to be interesting, different and imaginative. "Take the world of recording. The days are gone when you can do your third version of Dvorak's Cello Concerto. Look at Yo-Yo Ma, who's just completed a Silk Road journey on CD, playing with different musicians of different cultures along the Silk Road, then following that up with recordings of the cello music of the film composer John Williams. You have to make every idea a new idea nowadays."

Has he got a new idea of his own? "Yes, but I'm not saying," he replies quickly. "Let's just say that you'll be hearing some new approaches to the Lloyd Webber music in my other concert in Auckland, the pops concert where I'll be doing a new compilation called Lloyd Webber plays Lloyd Webber."

* Julian Lloyd Webber with the Auckland Philharmonia, Auckland Town Hall, Thursday.