Word: pianos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...watchful eye on the Broadway incarnation, which started previews on Saturday. "He monitors every word and orchestrates every aspect of the production," says Black. "He is good at casting, costumes, orchestration, design, marketing. Nothing slips through the net." When he does unwind, it is generally at his Steinway grand piano. "Want to hear some tunes?" he will ask, and a moment later will deliver several songs from Aspects in the tuneless dee-dee-dah-dum voice universally adopted by composers...
Indeed, except for Sondheim, few American theater composers can match Lloyd Webber's strong classical background. His father, who died in 1982, was Composer William Lloyd Webber, director of the London College of Music, and his mother Jean is a piano teacher. His brother Julian, now 36, became a noted concert cellist. Partly because of his bona fides, however, he feels that his field "inhabits a no-man's-land." Classical reviewers, he observes, do not consider musical shows a part of their world, while drama critics do not always pick up on the subtleties of his music...
That child was born into a rambling, bohemian flat in London's South Kensington neighborhood. At three Andrew began studying the violin; later he took up the piano and horn. "It was extremely noisy around our house," remembers Brother Julian. "I'd be scraping away on the cello, and Andrew would be bashing away on the piano." Adding to the happy din was John Lill, now a well-known British concert pianist, who was a member of the Lloyd Webber household and, more than anyone else, steered Andrew toward concerts and operas...
When engaged in a musical discussion, Lloyd Webber fairly bursts with enthusiasm, sometimes speaking so fast he begins to trip over his tongue. He can sit at the piano for hours, discoursing on composers from Rodgers to Prokofiev. On more personal topics he is reticent. He is particularly uncomfortable about his personal fortune and tends to scale down the size of his wealth and possessions. In fact, he is sometimes criticized for being tight-fisted with his money. ("Andrew thought he was broke when he was down to his last (pounds)3 million," says one friend...
...some extent too, we tend to think of eccentricity as the prerogative, even the hallmark, of genius. And genius is its own vindication. Who cared that Glenn Gould sang along with the piano while playing Bach, so long as he played so beautifully? Even the Herculean debauches of Babe Ruth did not undermine so much as confirm his status as a legend...