Jacqueline du Pré

Jacqueline du Pré was born in Oxford in the UK on January 26th 1945. She is acknowledged as one of the greatest cellists who ever lived, with a rare talent that was shared with the world. Her career was extremely successful, until the onset of multiple sclerosis which led to her early death.

She was four years old when she heard the cello for the first time on the radio – a younger daughter of a cultured family, she began having lessons with her mother, Iris. From then on the sound of the cello never left her life – at the age of six she was having lessons at a London cello school and entering music competitions alongside her sister. At ten she won a prize at an international competition and she was playing in concerts for the BBC by the time she was twelve.

In these young years she never seemed to stop playing and she studied with various international cellists from London, Paris, Russia and Switzerland.

As her career progressed, du Pré performed with prestigious orchestras and soloists. Her recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor (Op.85) brought her international recognition in 1961. For this particular recording she used her first Stradivarius cello – a 1712 Davidov Stradivarius which was given to her by her godmother.

In 1965, du Pré played the Elgar Concerto at Carnegie Hall in the USA on ay 14th. She was only 20 years old at the time.
Jacqueline met pianist Daniel Barenboim at Christmas in 1966. Their marriage one year later brought about one of the most fruitful relationships in the world of music: some consider it comparable only to that of Clara and Robert Schumann. This was evidenced by the many performances of du Pré with Barenboim as either a pianist or orchestral conductor. She converted to Judaism for the marriage.

Jacqueline's sister, Hilary, was married to the conductor, Christopher "Kiffer" Finzi, with whom Jacqueline had an affair. According to Hilary and her brother Piers in their book A Genius in the Family (released in America as Hilary and Jackie), the affair was conducted with Hilary's consent as a way of helping Jacqueline through a near–nervous breakdown, during which she exhibited suicidal behavior. Reportedly, Jackie begged Hilary to sleep with Kiffer as a way of living a simple life away from celebrity. In 1999, Kiffer and Hilary's children publicly criticised their mother's account and laid out a different version of events, in which their father was a serial adulterer who seduced their emotionally vulnerable aunt in a time of great need in order to gratify his own ego.

Du Pré’s kind nature attracted everyone around her – it was no wonder she made close friends with some of her co-musicians. It was the friendship with Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, and Pinchas Zukerman and her marriage to Daniel Barenboim that led to the famous film (by Christopher Nupen) of the “Trout” Quintet by Schubert and the five referred to themselves as The Jewish Musical Mafia.

Du Pré received several fellowships from music academies and honorary doctorate degrees from Universities, as an acknowledgment of her talent. When she was 15, she won the gold medal of the Guildhall School of Music in London and the Queen's Prize for British musicians. Some years later, in 1976, du Pré was made an OBE (Officer of the British Empire)

In 1971 the passionate sound of du Pré’s playing began to falter – the musician was losing the sensitivity in her fingers. According to Suvi Raj Grubb (a studio owner who worked with du Pré for six years), not even Jacqueline could pinpoint the exact time when she was feeling these mysterious and inexplicable tinglings in her fingers. The general malaise seemed to drain all her energy and she was at time so incapacitated as to have to cancel concerts and engagements.

In early December 1971, Raj Grubb received a call from Barenboim, asking if they could come and record in the studios. Jacqueline, who had not touched her cello for nearly six months, suddenly decided she wanted to play. However, after recording the Schubert “Trout” Quintet and the first movement of a Beethoven sonata (op.5, No.1) she put her cello away with “That is that.” She didn’t even listen to what was taped. That was Jacqueline du Pre’s last appearance in the recording studio.

In 1973, the disease was finally given a name – multiple sclerosis. Her health continued to deteriorate and she died in London on October 19th 1987 at the age of 42, David Barenboim at her side. She left her precious 1712 Stradivarius in the capable hands of Yo-Yo Ma.

In the last years of du Pré’s life, Barenboim (with his wife’s consent) made a home in Paris with pianist Elena Bashkirova and fathered two children by her. They married in 1988.



Information taken and adapted from Wikipedia and an extract from Jacqueline du Pré: Impressions by Suvi Raj Grubb.



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