Jacqueline du Pré 

What is it that makes some artists live longer and brighter in the memory? In Jacqueline du

Pré's case, she not only surprised and delighted us with her music, she had ways of touching the

heart that are given to very, very few.

• Nobody really knows the answer to that question, but while you cannot explain it you can feel it .

Jacqueline du Pré and the Elgar Cello Concerto

Jacqueline du Pré caught the public imagination when she was still in her teens, partly because she had a very unusual and elevated relationship with the Elgar cello Concerto. For critics and public alike, her performances focused new attention on the inherent pathos in Elgar's melancholy masterpiece and had an emotional quality that has never been matched by anyone else. 

• She played it first at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 21 March 1962 when she was just seventeen years old. On the following morning, Neville Cardus, one of England's most distinguished writers on music, described the work in The Guardian as, "A swan-song of rare and vanishing beauty", and he reviewed her performance of it in such strong and poetic terms as any seventeen year old has ever received from a senior critic. He concluded his review with these words: 

• "Those actually 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." 

In the next few years, Jacqueline du Pré won an enthusiastic audience for the concerto, not only in the United Kingdom but in the rest of Europe, in the United States and in the Soviet Union. 

• She played the work for the last time in 1973, when her brilliant career as one of the finest musicians that Britain has ever produced, was cut short by multiple sclerosis. 

• After 1973, she could no longer play the cello, but she remained a brave and adventurous spirit, her passion for music undimmed and her attitude in coming to terms with her illness as touching as it was courageous.

Born: Jan. 26th 1945 in OxfordDied: Oct. 19th 1987 in London

Sit back and relax and enjoy this beautiful piece of music. A masterpiece

The End

Winston W Wallace