Julian Lloyd Webber says he feels the ghosts of classical icons including Mozart warning him to conduct their music correctly.
The former cellist, 72 – whose brother Andrew’s musicals include The Phantom Of The Opera – said he also gets so close to the minds of legends such as Bach when conducting he feels as if he is being guided by their spirits.
Speaking ahead of launching his Bach Revealed concert tour, Julian said: “You’re working in a field where you are getting into the minds of other people within their compositions and music, so strange things do sometimes happen in the middle of concerts.
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(Image: Getty Images)
“Perhaps you’ll have taken a direction with your playing which just happens – so where that comes from, who knows?
“There’s definitely a spiritual element to playing music… you feel you have to play something in a certain way and that’s perhaps because you were trying to get so close to that personality.
“Maybe suddenly in the middle of the concert they may tell you.”
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Julian was cruelly forced to give up his cello playing career in 2014 due to a slipped disc in his neck, which reduced the bowing power in his right arm.
He said about being kept on track by spirits when he’s conducting: “I haven’t had ghost sightings, but I might have had hearings.”
“It’s one of those funny things – Mozart never wrote for cello, but he wrote 49 symphonies, and I’ve conducted two of them.
“All I can say is I felt really close to that music, and I think people mess around with it too much sometimes.
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“He was a very direct composer and I think he is very clear in his scores about what he wants and I felt that very strongly – don’t mess around with him too much!”
Bach Revealed by Julian and his cellist wife Jiaxin Lloyd Webber, 48, will tour the UK this summer.
It will see Julian narrates the story behind the composition of Bach’s iconic Cello Suites while introducing performances of the suites by his partner.
For more information, see julianlloydwebber.com.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
