Bows and Arrows

When Julian Lloyd Webber stepped onto the Wigmore Hall stage to perform Fauré’s Élégie at a concert celebrating his seventy-fifth last month, it marked the British cellist’s first public performance since a herniated disc brought his career on the concert platform to an abrupt halt twelve years ago. It was during a performance of John Ireland’s Cello Sonata with Rebeca Omordia back in 2013 that Lloyd Webber experienced the first frightening symptoms of a condition which led to him selling his beloved Stradivarius and cancelling all future engagements by spring of the following year, and his autobiography Bows and Arrows begins just as that dark night of the soul falls – with Lloyd Webber inwardly screaming ‘WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG?!’ as he loses control of his bowing arm mid-performance.

It’s a raw, arresting opening to what proves to be one of the most engaging, forthright and often laugh-out-loud funny classical autobiographies in years: Lloyd Webber is terrific company, recounting encounters with the great, good and not-so-good with the easy charisma of a pub raconteur and offering some invaluable insights into the shifts in the recording industry, the classical canon, music education and indeed society at large along the way.

He’s candid about the difficult times (and there have been several) without lapsing into self-pity, and although he doesn’t pull his punches about various personal and professional conflicts there’s no sense of unfair blame-shifting or spiteful tittle-tattle for its own sake. Doyens and doyennes of the cello such as Pierre Fournier, Mstislav Rostropovich and Jacqueline du Pré are celebrated with genuine love and respect, but at no point does Lloyd Webber cross the line into hagiography: all emerge as fully-rounded figures, and Lloyd Webber’s fury at the misrepresentation of du Pré in the 1998 film Hilary and Jackie positively blazes off the page.

Lloyd Webber’s chaotic upbringing in a rented ‘house of music’ (to borrow a phrase from Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason’s recent memoir) in Kensington is brought vividly to life. Father William (whose music Julian went on to champion after his death) is an inspiring if rather elusive presence, his position as Director of the Royal College of Music consuming much of his time and his resentment at the disruption of his composition career by World War Two a bitter undertone; his opinion of Benjamin Britten’s departure for America as a conscientious objector is expressed in colourful language indeed.

Brother Andrew never dominates the narrative after these early chapters (cropping up only when the brothers’ professional paths cross), but a lovely description of the two boys constructing a toy theatre where Andrew would stage musicals with toy soldiers proves to be the shape of things to come. And various talented satellites orbit the family home from the boys’ schooldays onward. Andrew’s future collaborator Tim Rice becomes an honorary member of the family early on, and a chance encounter at Junior College orchestra brings John Lill (seven years Julian’s senior) into the household as one of several young male musicians whom Lloyd Webber’s mother Jean ‘obsessed over’. The uneasy dynamics which ensued are not papered over, as Lloyd Webber reflects that Lill’s subsequent victory at the International Tchaikovsky Competition vindicated Jean’s faith in him ‘at whatever cost to our family’.

The most shocking revelation comes in the second chapter, when the nine-year-old Julian is sexually assaulted by a man in an otherwise deserted train-carriage as he explores the outer reaches of Piccadilly Line unaccompanied – the rather flip title ‘Close Encounters of the Perv Kind’ belies the raw description of the ensuing trauma, which the child navigated by talking things out with his grandmother. Wounds are reopened some years later when Alan Doggett, the music teacher who commissioned the school cantata which would become Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (and to whom both boys had been close) is accused of sexually abusing pupils and takes his own life, which Lloyd Webber lambasts as an act of ‘breathtaking selfishness’.

The darkness largely recedes once Lloyd Webber’s career takes flight, which it does in fine style when Ruth Gipps invites him to give the London premiere of Arthur Bliss’s Cello Concerto. Gipps is one of several women who have a profound impact on the young Lloyd Webber, alongside the super-agent Emmie Tillett and Nadia Boulanger (who makes several cameo appearances, including at his scholarship audition at the Royal College).

It’s fascinating to read about Lloyd Webber’s repertoire choices as his star enters the ascendent, including flying the flag for neglected works by British composers such as his Delius, Bliss and his own father, and commissioning new works from the likes of Joaquín Rodrigo, Philip Glass and Gavin Bryars (both resounding successes on a personal and musical level) and Michael Nyman (less so). The storytelling around these collaborations makes for some of the most compelling chapters, as do the anecdotes around partnerships with pianists, violinists and conductors: a recording of the Elgar concerto with Yehudi Menuhin is cherished for the proximity by proxy to the composer, whilst working with Stéphane Grappelli proves more of a curate’s egg thanks to the jazz violinist’s inverted snobbery and reluctance to rehearse.

Still other partnerships are dogged by the prevalence of alcohol abuse in the industry (a pitfall which Lloyd Webber himself avoids, whilst not being averse to a decent pint or three to decompress after a gig): a commission from Malcolm Arnold (whom he clearly adored) delivers only ‘rudimentary jottings’ from a ‘forlorn figure’ in the grip of addiction, whilst several important concerts are almost derailed by conductors or pianists being in no fit state to travel, rehearse or perform.

At several difficult junctures (including a potentially catastrophic bout of unexplained hand pain and the break-up of a marriage) Lloyd Webber seeks solace not at the bottom of a glass but through a glass darkly, consulting medium and healer Rosemary Brown: whatever she does seems to work, though Lloyd Webber chooses not to unpack his spiritual beliefs in any great detail.

It is Brown who foreshadows Lloyd Webber’s fourth, current marriage to fellow cellist Jiaxin Cheng, whom he fleetingly meets in Auckland during her student days and reconnects with on a deeper level when he returns to play the Glass Cello Concerto. The breakdowns of his previous three marriages (to teenage sweetheart Celia Ballantyne, Zohra Mahmoud Ghazi and Kheira Bourahla) are recounted with candour and, on the whole, compassion – though by the time we reach Wife No. 3 this reader was willing him to see the red flags.

Jiaxin’s unstinting support in the wake of Lloyd Webber’s retirement from performance is movingly recounted, including a challenging relocation to Birmingham where Lloyd Webber served as Principal from 2015 until 2020; his description of attending his first-ever job interview for the role is a tour de force of black comedy, though his deep commitment to improving access to music education and willingness to leverage high-profile connections (including royalty) obviously won the day.

The book ends on a cliffhanger, as Lloyd Webber reflects on their young daughter Jasmine’s wistful observation that she ‘wished she’d heard him play’ and considers whether it might be possible for him to perform the newly completed piece he wrote for her at his Wigmore birthday concert…As things turned out, he plumped for Fauré instead (joined again by Omordia, who had been his partner at that fateful concert in 2013), but Jasmine nonetheless got her wish. Though he was at pains to frame his appearance as a one-off, both the event itself (which showcased several young musicians whom he mentored during his time in Birmingham) and this thoroughly enriching book stand as testimony to time well spent in the face of the slings (or rather bows) and arrows of outrageous fortune.