This year marks the 60th anniversary of Jacqueline du Pré’s London performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, which shook the classical world

“A swansong of rare and vanishing beauty. Those present were witness, on the first day of spring, to an early blossoming in Miss du Pré’s playing, and such a beautiful blossoming as this year, or any other year, is likely to know for a long time to come,” wrote The Guardian’s Neville Cardus the morning after cellist Jacqueline du Pré’s Royal Festival Hall concerto debut on 21 March, 1962, playing the Cello Concerto by British composer Edward Elgar.

With few performances under her belt and just 17 years old, du Pré not only brought excitement to one of the most important stages in London but impressed Britain’s most distinguished music critic of the time. Other reviews were equally rapturous.

In the following few years, du Pré caught the public imagination with concerts around the world. In 1965, the conductor Sir John Barbirolli asked the cellist to record the Elgar concerto for EMI in what was to become a legendary recording and make her an international star.

At a Christmas party in 1966, she met the Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. They played the Brahms F major Sonata together and spent much of the evening talking. The next morning Jackie called her sister, Hilary, and told her, “Hil, I’m in love, I’m in love.”

The following June, the couple were married in Jerusalem. They had arrived in Israel two weeks earlier to show solidarity with the country as the Six-Day War loomed. The spontaneous decision to marry required an overnight conversion to Judaism for du Pré. British Rabbi Albert Friedlander, who married them, later described how the rabbinical court had expressed reluctance to grant an instant conversion: “Clever Daniel, with his knowledge of the Talmud, is said to have remarked: ‘Which is the greater sin, to get married straight away or to live together straight away?’” The conversion proceeded and the marriage took place the next day in a house overlooking Jerusalem’s newly liberated Old City. The luncheon was at the King David Hotel with former prime minister David Ben-Gurion among the guests.

The next three years took the couple on tours throughout America and Europe and du Pré made frequent recordings. Christopher Nupen caught the excitement of those days in his classic 1967 documentary, Jacqueline du Pré and the Elgar Cello Concerto, which includes the cellist’s performance of Elgar’s work with Barenboim conducting. The following year, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the pair performed Dvorák’s Cello Concerto at the Royal Albert Hall in a benefit for Czech refugees.

What set her playing apart? The answer probably lies in the passion and emotion she brought to her work, which elevated her remarkable talent to another level. The BBC’s Helen Wallace wrote, “It was a natural extension of herself… Seeing her face illuminated by pure inspiration, her long balletic bowing arm, the precision engineering of that wrist, her tremendous long fingers snapping down on the fingerboard, or executing those heartstopping slides between notes… her enjoyment remains infectious; with her, everything seems possible.”

But in 1971, at the age of 26, she began to lose sensitivity in her fingers. Two years later, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Her last public performances took place in New York, in February 1973, when she was scheduled to play alongside Pinchas Zuckerman and with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. Du Pré recalled, “just opening the cello case had become difficult.” Her fourth and final concert had to be cancelled.

In her last years she was confined to a wheelchair, although she sometimes gave masterclasses and her passion for music never faltered. She died in 1987, aged 42.

Barenboim has said of her playing, “She was so free, emotional and carefree – not careless – that perhaps she represented what many people in England wished they could be but didn’t quite manage to be.”

By Rebecca Taylor

Christopher Nupen’s film, Jacqueline du Pré and the Elgar Cello Concerto, will be shown on Wednesday 8 June, 7.30pm, followed by a discussion with Julia Neuberger, cellists Natalie Clein and Francesca Ter-Berg, and Rabbi Ariel J Friedlander, the daughter of Rabbi Albert Friedlander. It is a JR 20th anniversary event in partnership with the Jewish Music Institute. See our events page for details.

This article appears in the Spring 2022 issue of JR.