Jacqueline du Pré - Elgar & Delius: The Cello Concertos (Remastered) (1965/2024)

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Jacqueline du Pré - Elgar & Delius: The Cello Concertos (Remastered) (1965/2024)

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The tragedy of du Pré’s brief career is still fresh in the public memory and can be summarised here. She was born in Oxford on 26 January 1945 into a middle-class family in which music was important: her mother was a fine pianist and a gifted teacher. The French-sounding name came from her father’s Channel Islands ancestry. Just before her fifth birthday, when she was already showing musical promise, she heard the sound of a cello on the radio and the course of her life was set. She studied at Herbert Walenn’s London Violoncello School and at ten became a pupil of William Pleeth, who had himself studied with Julius Klengel. Pleeth played with a good deal of uninhibited body movement and passed this trait on to du Pré, whose total physical involvement in her playing was to endear her to audiences. She made a successful London recital début in 1961, studied with Casals in Switzerland, Tortelier in Paris and Rostropovich in Moscow with varying degrees of success – one wonders what these players could have taught such a natural musician – and gradually consolidated her reputation at home. She began recording for EMI in 1962 and by 1965, when her famous disc of the Elgar Concerto was made, she was a star. That year she made her American début and in 1967 she married the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim.

In July 1971, when she shoud have been at her peak, she began suffering seriously from a mysterious ailment which had already intermittently affected her playing. Eventually multiple sclerosis was diagnosed and, after a cruel series of remissions and relapses typical of that illness, in 1973 she retired. Gradually her health deteriorated, and she died in London on 19 October 1987.

Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, his last notable work, is a cornerstone of the solo cello repertoire. Elgar composed it in the aftermath of the First World War, when his music had already gone out of fashion with the concert-going public. In contrast with Elgar's earlier Violin Concerto, which is lyrical and passionate, the Cello Concerto is for the most part contemplative and elegiac.

The October 1919 premiere was a debacle because Elgar and the performers had been deprived of adequate rehearsal time. Elgar made two recordings of the work with Beatrice Harrison as soloist. The American premiere was given on 21 November 1922 by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski with Jean Gerardy, cello. The 'Musical Courier' wrote: "About the Elgar there was no dissenting opinion. It is a long work, and it ambles on and on and on, utterly without distinction, utterly without inspiration." The work did not achieve wide popularity until the 1960s, when a recording by Jacqueline du Pré caught the public imagination and became a classical best-seller. Since then, leading cellists from Pablo Casals onward have performed the work in concert and in the studio.

Frederick Delius's Cello Concerto was composed in 1920–1921. The world premiere was given in January 1923 in Vienna by Alexandre Barjansky. The work was written at the request of the English cellist Beatrice Harrison, who was the soloist at the British premiere in July 1923.

This was the composer's favourite of his concertos. It was first commercially recorded in 1965 and has received further recordings subsequently.