Their home was a vast flat near South Kensington Tube filled, more often than not, with the musical prodigies their mother had decided to champion, such as the now acclaimed pianist John Lill. The couple divorced in 2008 after a turbulent relationship
Rocky road: Julian at his wedding to French Algerian Kheira Bourahia in Kensington, West London. ‘I do believe everyone was very happy for us,’ Julian says. The reception was held in the garden at London’s Chelsea Arts Club on a ‘beautiful day’. This time, Andrew was best man at the wedding in 2009. ‘The dynamic I have with Jiaxin,’ he says, ‘is the most similar I’ve had to working with Andrew, in that you know someone so well.’ They’ve recently finished a 13-date tour, performing duets for two cellos with piano, and have released a CD together. We play together but our styles are very different. Dare I say it’s more feminine? It’s like our marriage: a man and a woman. She’s the first musician with whom Julian has had a relationship, and he worships her. Thankfully, Jiaxin is the sort of softly spoken woman who understands a gentle foot rub gets you a whole lot further than stamping your Jimmy Choo. I’m not someone who harbours resentment.’ Today, Julian seems such a gentle man it’s impossible to imagine him flying off the handle, but he tells me: ‘Of course I have a temper - I’ve never met a musician who doesn’t. The marriage ended shortly after police were called to his South Kensington home to intervene in a rather nasty row in June 2006. His famous brother, Andrew, didn’t attend the wedding.
When he married his volatile third wife, Kheira, the daughter of a French-Algerian bricklayer, everyone warned him against it. The sort of person whose heart often rules his head. Particularly, I suspect, for Julian - an emotional man who feels things deeply. ‘You don’t go into marriage thinking it’s not going to work. Never,’ says Julian, in a bewildered sort of way. ‘I never would have thought I’d be married four times. Their two-year-old daughter, Jasmine, is asleep in the nursery next door. When Julian Lloyd Webber’s explosive third marriage ended disastrously six years ago, you’d have thought the world-renowned cellist would have had his fill of ‘I do’s’.īut here he is at 63, in his stylish West London drawing room, with wife No 4, 39-year-old cellist Jiaxin Cheng. Happy at last: Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber and his fourth wife, Jiaxin, also a cellist, who is mother to his two-year-old daughter Jasmine
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