This is a re-issue, in an improved version, of Christopher Nupens best-selling DVD previously released through Opus Arte it now appears on the Christopher Nupen Films label for the first time. As usual with Christopher Nupen DVDs, this one contains two films: the famous portrait film of Jacqueline du Prй which includes the complete Elgar cello Concerto in a performance which has become legendary and a performance film, The Ghost (Beethovens Trio Op. 70 No. 1) with Daniel Barenboim and Pinchas Zukerman; described by the French opera and film director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle as the most successful translation of musical performance onto the screen that he had ever seen. And, also as usual with Christopher Nupen films, these are lit, shot and edited in the style of cinema film, not television. The results are visually impressive and totally unlike what usually appears on television screens an important, defining characteristic of this DVD.
Jacqueline du Pré was recognized during her brief prime as one of the supreme cellists of the 20th century, with an intense commitment and a well-honed technical mastery to back up her heaven-sent talents. She seemed to inhabit every piece she played and the public responded joyfully to her interpretations of such concertos as the Elgar and the Schumann, as well as the sonatas of Beethoven, Brahms, Franck et al. She was also at the centre of an extraordinary group of young friends who set the classical musical agenda for the 1960s. The way her career was snatched away from her by a remorseless illness, leading to her early death, has inevitably cast a romantic glow over her life story. So it is salutary to visit or revisit this treasury of her recordings - almost all of them painstakingly remastered from the original tapes, and including previously unissued performances - and remind ourselves just how great she was.
Her story is one of the most legendary of all twentieth century musicians' stories, and also, one of the most tragic. Cellist Jacqueline Du Pré, born on January 26, 1945, in Oxford, England, to Derek and Iris Du Pré. (Despite the family name, Derek Du Pré was not French, but rather of British Channel Island ancestry; he could trace his lineage back to the Norman Conquest).