Ruth Leon recommends… Remembering Jacqueline du Pre
Ruth Leon recommendsRemembering Jacqueline du Pre
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When I was very young, 5 or 6 years old, the little girl next door would sometimes come over to play. More often, she was at home playing something else, a big piece of wood I later learned to call a cello. I called her Jackie, her husband would nickname her Smiley, and she grew up smiling in a world that loved her.
Over the years our paths crossed occasionally and we were always glad to see one another when we did. We lived in different countries but I always thought there would be time for us to renew our childhood friendship later, when life wasn’t such a personal and professional scramble.
But Jacqueline du Pre died in 1987 when she was only 42, when she was already recognised as one of the world’s greatest musicians, Her time had run out far too soon.
The documentarian Christopher Nupen, who specialised in making music films which were more about the musicians than the music, chronicled her time with a number of documentaries about her and her friends when she and her friends were the young musicians who set the tempo of the international music world.
Medici has a number of these fine films including this documentary which shines a light into her world. This film remembers Jacqueline du Pré as she was, full of joy, with an exceptional collection of archive material taken from Christopher Nupen’s collection. We see her with her husband, Daniel Barenboim, her friends Zubin Mehta, Itzhak Perlman, William Pleeth, singing along with her cello, playing Clementi on the piano at home with Barenboim, teaching, rehearsing with John Barbirolli and much more.
MS is a dreadful neurological desease . Although we now have symptom management medications and DMT’s, desease modifying therapies, when Jackie was diagnosed some 40 years ago we had nothing. We still have no cure for MS.
du Pre, Barenboim, Mehta, Perlman, Pleeth, AND Pinchas Zukerman.
https://alanshulman.com/wp-content/uploads/Images/photo8.jpg
Alan Shulman, Gregor Piatigorsky, Jacqueline DuPré, Daniel Barenboim, Janos Scholz – Violoncello Society, Kosciuszko Foundation, NYC, October 25, 1970
Now that’s some photo. Thanks for sharing it.
Enough about supremely talented white musicians. We need to talk more about untalented and overrated black musicians.
Who exactly? And how have you quantified that correlation?
Jaqueline Du Pre’s talent was of such magnitude that we don’t need to consider her race, gender or appearance.
A sad loss for the world. Such a brilliant musician.