How good was Jacqueline du Pre ?

[Alison]

I thought of this having seen her again on the front cover of BBCMM.

Do we really need her there ?

Perhaps we do ...

Anyway, apart from that relatively minor consideration, please appraise her career and musical talent.

[Norfolk Born]

I always felt sorry for the cello....
More seriously: IMHO her playing in the Beethoven chamber works which she recorded with Daniel Barenboim and Pinchas Zuckerman is easier to live with than some of her recordings of concertos. She seems to exercise more self-control in the former without losing any expressiveness.

[salymap]

Having seen her play trios at Brighton Music Festival and rehearse. and play concertos in London I agree about the chamber music being more disciplined but I think she would have quietened down as she got older, had she had the chance. Having seen du Pre,Ferrier and other people taken prematurely from us I find it difficult to criticize and am just glad I saw them.

[Alison]

Come on Cellini. You're good on string playing ........ xXx

[mangerton]

Well, I saw her playing Dvorak in the Usher Hall when I was 16 or 17, and was rather star struck.

[Serial_Apologist]

I love Jacqui's playing of the Elgar concerto on the two recordings I have: the studio and the live one. To me she is/was the nearest one can get to the intensity of the best of jazz, eg John Coltrane, in the classical field.

S-A

[Dave2002]

I did manage to see her play - I think it was the Elgar concerto. She was very good. That doesn't mean there aren't or haven't been others who are/were also very good, but if Alison is wondering whether she was overhyped, on balance I'd say not.

I don't know who I'd want to hear playing the cello these days.

[Uncle Monty]

This is a question I'm always really torn over.

I did see her play a couple of times in the 60s, and she was obviously a great player.

BUT -- I'd better front up: I really didn't like her playing, which seemed crude and shouty to me, and I found her a complete embarrassment on a personal level. (My mother, when watching her on tv, would exclaim "Sheer affectation!") She clearly had great charm -- as witness the breathless hagiography of Kitty Nupen's films about her, and all the people in them -- but I seemed resistant to it! Perhaps as a teenager I was looking for cool, and cool she definitely wasn't. And that faux-French accent -- where did that come from? Her French was reportedly non-existent. She just seemed "odd". (And now we know more about her family, it's not surprising.)

I was discussing her recently with a cellist friend in Ukraine, a woman too young to have seen JdP in the flesh. The question was who was the greatest cellist we had heard or seen? I voted for Natalia Gutman, but was quickly slapped down by my friend, who was adamant that "Jackie was cellist from the Godd". So I suppose it's all personal taste, like so many things. My feeling, I suppose, is that she is idolised by a lot of people for whom she represents the coltish naivete of their long-gone adolescence, and I might well be one of them if I had found her an aspirational figure at the time, but I didn't. I had other fish to fry

[BBMmk2]

I have seen her in chamber works. I thought she excelled in both chamber and concerti. That was the ideal, IMO, partnership she had with Barenboim and Perlman.

[Mary Chambers]

I never saw her live, sadly, but have seen films of her and heard recordings. I have always felt that she had a sort of wild, over-the-top genius rather like that of Nureyev, who was also not always approved of by the cognoscenti. I do not think she was affected. It was all genuine - but not very British, of course!

[Richard Tarleton]

I saw her live a couple of times, at very different stages of her short career - playing Beethoven trios with Barenboim and Zuckerman in Oxford Town Hall in 1968, all very exuberant ("dishevelled" performances a grumpy critic at the time called them), and her sad final UK performance, (of the Elgar) in February 1973. I've never felt tempted to buy a record by her, though I have loads by Rostropovich, Tortelier, Starker (no fan of blonde lady cellists he) and others - I love the cello, but seem instinctively drawn to greater austerity in cellists. I can't think of a single cello work which there's a good reason for owning a record by her of - apart from the Elgar which I don't particularly like (I also heard Tortelier play it). I saw Rostropovich and Tortelier for the first time around the same time. I'm glad I "ticked" her, but that's about it. Those hagiographic C Nupen films I just found embarrassing, even then.

[Cellini]

Come on Cellini. You're good on string playing ........ xXx

I've come to this a bit late!! I'm not sure I'm good at string playing either, I sounded rotten yesterday.

But, I would say that Jackie had her faults, but they were minor and quite forgiveable. She was in my opinion an outstanding player, although I can agree that it was sometimes a little distasteful depending on the work performed. But that's me being really rotten.

She was a prety good teacher and my wife knew her and worked with her later in her short life - and always extremely nice as a person at that time. I never knew her, and the one occasion I was involved and she was to do a concerto she didn't turn up, so you could say she was unreliable, maybe. I played once with her sister (a flute player, and religious nut) - and I did not like her at all!!

Jackie had this effect of sometimes starting vibrato after she had secured the note - something I'm not too keen on, but again, I'm nick picking. Personally I think she has to be rated very highly as a mid 20C solo cellist, and the tragedy of her short life almost certainly robbed us all of an even finer musician. I also knew and liked her teacher, the late William Pleeth, and he was an outstanding teacher too.

[Barbirollians]

Her playing moves me like very few other musicians I suppose that is what counts .

[EdgeleyRob]

Well if the Brahms sonatas with Barenboim are anything to go by,the best.

[Dave2002]

I think that Natalie Clien and Alisa Weilerstein might be moving into the same areas.