What are your earliest childhood holiday memories? My father (the composer William Lloyd Webber) used to rent cottages in locations chosen because of my brother’s love of ancient monuments. We’d usually end up going down ridiculous unpaved roads, getting flat tyres, with my father effing and blinding.
What was it like growing up in such a musical house? Was it inevitable you’d become a musician? It seemed completely normal to me – all this racket going on in every room. It might have been slightly more assumed for my life than for Andrew’s, because Andrew was really into all these monuments.
Were your parents terrific music teachers to you and Andrew? My father was a brilliant musician, but it was arm’s length, and my mother was a really good piano teacher for young children. But it was a disaster with me because I found it very odd learning with someone I called Mum.
How old were you when you first picked up a cello? Four. Mum took me to the Festival Hall to hear an orchestral children’s concert and I just loved the look of the cello and asked to play one. It was a tenth-size cello and when it arrived I was very disappointed.
What other instruments did you play? I tried the trumpet, which was even worse in a London flat with neighbours.
Did you play in the school orchestra? I went to University College School and tried not to play in the orchestra because it wasn’t very good.
When did you decide to become a soloist? Rostropovich gave a huge series of nine concerts in London and I went to every single one aged 11.
What was your first big break? In my final concert at the Royal College in 1972, I played the immense Prokofiev Symphony Concerto and Sir Arthur Bliss was there. After the concert, he left me his own cello concerto. I learnt it, and played it to him. I was unbelievably nervous. And he arranged for me to give the first London performance of it at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
What was your first engagement abroad? It was a European young musicians’ TV show in Holland in 1973; I played two movements of the Haydn D Major Concerto. The last one’s very difficult – I thought it had gone really well, and everybody went off to the bar for loads of drinks. Then the producer said we had to retake as there were problems with the lighting.
How many cellos do you have?
I don’t have any, because I had to retire from playing after a herniated disc in my neck reduced my bowing-arm power in 2014.
How did you travel with your cello? You have to have a seat for the cello, but they never know how to check a cello in.
What’s your favourite concert hall? The Usher Hall [in Edinburgh] acoustically is terrific, and the Albert Hall for its sense of history is unbeatable.
What was Yehudi Menuhin like? I loved working with Yehudi. He’s one of the great string players – so I always felt he would watch my bow and I could be as free as I liked.
What do you think about British music education, which you’ve been a great supporter of? At one time it was probably the best in the world. I think the system is very unfair on children, a lot of whom get no access to music – but the new government have promised to reintroduce music to schools.
Is Britain still the land without music? For a lot of children, it is.
How did the Paganini variation composed by your brother, Andrew, become the South Bank Show theme tune? Andrew had written this piece for me, as the result of a bet on a Leyton Orient match. We made the album, and Melvyn Bragg was looking for new things for his South Bank Show…
Have you worked a lot with Andrew? That was it, except for his film score for The Odessa File (1974), and we sometimes played in concert together.
You retired in 2014 – do you miss performing in public?
I miss that live connection with the audience, but I conduct a bit and then it’s immediately back.
Do you have a go at the local language when you’re abroad? I would rather learn a new concerto.
What’s your biggest headache when travelling? Airport, cello, security, fiddling around with liquid…
What’s the strangest place you’ve ever slept while being away? For two weeks, I did a tour with the Moscow Soloists, on a coach around the US, and they fixed up this bed and I just drew the curtain between me and the other members of the orchestra and slept as a rock ’n’ roller…
Classic FM’s Rising Stars with Julian Lloyd Webber is on Sky Arts TV this autumn
