News & Press

Extracts from Vanessa Thorpe’s article in The Observer
Sunday August 26, 2007

Cellist Lloyd Webber says Venezuela youth orchestra’s Prom should be catalyst for change.

It’s an age-old criticism – classical music is elitist, for white people only and does little to engage young people more at home on their PlayStation 3.

Well, now the fightback begins. The virtuoso cellist Julian Lloyd Webber has demanded an end to such ‘tired’ assumptions. Speaking after a youth concert at the Albert Hall last week that was hailed by several critics as a candidate for ‘the best Prom of all time’, he said: ‘We need to give all young people access to this music and to orchestral instruments.’

Lloyd Webber, first spotted as a promising young musician in his early teens, said that last Sunday’s performance by the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra from Venezuela was ‘frankly shaming’ to the British cultural establishment. ‘This concert showed that classical music can be hip and that it is enjoyed by young people from every kind of background,’ he said.

His strongly worded comments are likely to fuel a growing political debate about whether the state should step in to sponsor orchestral music education or leave the minority art form to find its own salvation.  The youth orchestra is the result of a 30-year-old Venezuelan state scheme to lend instruments and offer free tuition to the poorest children from city ghettos. It has been taken up by more than 250,000 children and may now be copied in parts of Scotland, with a trial starting later this year in Stirling.

But Lloyd Webber believes that Britain’s leading orchestras should also become involved by regularly allowing schoolchildren into their rehearsals for free. ‘This is something I am happy to do and it is a very good way to let young people hear this kind of music, and it costs the orchestras very little,’ he said. ‘Why should it be assumed that young people will not enjoy it? The problem is that they can’t afford lessons. When I went to the Royal College of Music, I was one of the few public school educated children there. Now I am told the reverse is true. The problem is nothing to do with the music itself. It is about access.’