They called her Smiley, for the
wide, radiant glow of joy that rarely left her face. Her bow gouging into the
cello string, her long, red-gold hair flying around her silk-clad shoulders, she
played with an uninhibited physicality that could conjure up extremes of
elemental ferocity and tenderness. Her career, which once had a momentum that
would leave a comet breathless, came to an abrupt end when she was struck down
by multiple sclerosis at the age of 28, and the disease killed her in 1987. She
would have celebrated her 60th birthday on 26 January this year. But even now,
more than 30 years after her last concert, Jacqueline du Pré is rarely out of
the limelight.
Her recordings still sell in
droves; Christopher Nupen's film Jacqueline du Pré - In Portrait was the
highest-selling classical DVD of 2004, and surely nobody who has seen his film
of her performing the Elgar Cello Concerto can hear the work again without
remembering her. Yet critics often lambasted her unusual technique, her
extravagantly physical style and her relentless intensity; her reputation
suffered from Anand Tucker's notorious 1998 feature film Hilary and Jackie,
which displayed a less salubrious side of her family and personal life.
But despite critics'
nit-picking and the public washing of dirty laundry, Du Pré remains an icon, a
figure whose talent, radiance, apparently fairy-tale life and tragic death add
up to more than the sum of their parts. What exactly was it about her that
could, and still can, inspire such devotion? How much of her mystique can be
attributed to her extraordinary and terrible life story? Just how accurate were
those damning reviews? Why does her memory still burn so brightly?
Du Pré's life is well
documented. Born into a middle-class family in Oxford, she heard a cello for the
first time aged four and declared that this was the sound she wanted to make.
Soon her family was astonished by the fervour with which she exclaimed, "I love
my cello so much!" In competitive music festivals she showed none of the
reticence common in other children. An observer at one contest, seeing her
skipping down a corridor, said, "I can see you've just played." She hadn't: she
was about to go on stage and was thrilled with expectation.
News of her talent travelled
fast. She studied with William Pleeth, calling him her "cello daddy", and missed
large chunks of school to focus on music; her godmother helped to buy her a
Stradivarius; and her Wigmore Hall debut, at 16, launched a career that soon
took in an EMI record contract, concertos with the greatest conductors of her
day and duo partnerships with some of the finest young pianists, including
Stephen Kovacevich (then known as Stephen Bishop) and later Daniel Barenboim -
whom she married in Israel in 1967 amid a whirl of public adulation. She and
Barenboim were at once an international celebrity couple, a classical Posh and
Becks.
But by 1970, Du Pré was
suffering from peculiar symptoms, including episodes of numbness, intense
fatigue and a sensation of weakness in her limbs. The symptoms came and went;
time and again doctors dismissed them as psychosomatic. Convinced that she was
heading for a nervous breakdown, Du Pré cancelled her engagements for six months
and went to stay with her sister, Hilary, and her family, where allegedly she
had an affair with her brother-in-law.
Her marriage to Barenboim had
not proved as much of a fairy tale as its image suggested; plagued by a sense of
intellectual inferiority and inadequate stamina (Barenboim is still legendarily
energetic), she had left him behind, as well as her cello, for those few months,
in a trial separation. Afterwards she returned to him and to her concert life -
but her attempts at resuming the latter soon foundered on her physical problems.
At last she was advised to see a neurologist, who diagnosed multiple sclerosis.
Her performing career ended
that year, 1973. Over the 14 years of her slow decline into complete incapacity,
Barenboim continued to look after her devotedly in London. Although he never
left her, eventually, during her last years, he set up another home in Paris
with the Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova, whom he later married.
It was a modern legend of
someone blessed yet cursed, like the Kennedy family, Marilyn Monroe or Princess
Diana. Since Du Pré's death, has legend overwhelmed reality? Our responses today
to her recordings and films are coloured by knowledge of her fate. But there's
no doubt, when you talk to those who knew and worked with her, that her
blessings were every bit as powerful as her curse.
The cellist Raphael Wallfisch,
who is spearheading two days of celebratory events to mark Du Pré's 60th
birthday, has never forgotten his childhood experiences of seeing her in action.
"My mother, the cellist Anita Lasker, was a member of the English Chamber
Orchestra and used to take me with her to rehearsals and recording sessions," he
reminisces. "I was present when Du Pré recorded the Haydn C major Cello Concerto
with Barenboim conducting, and I remember those sessions as if it were
yesterday. The atmosphere was like a party. Du Pré was full of joy and smiles;
everyone was having a good time. You'd never have imagined it was a recording
session!"
Stephen Kovacevich, her former
duo partner, remembers this feeling too: "When I walked on stage with her, I
looked forward to the concert and never felt imprisoned by remembering little
details, because the performance would be no-holds barred. She had a joy about
her which helped me too. She wasn't religious, but she used to say, 'I have a
God-given talent and I feel it's my privilege to share it with my friends.' That
was absolutely genuine. When you go on stage with someone like that, it brings
out the best in you as well."
The film director Christopher
Nupen vividly recalls meeting Du Pré for the first time in 1962. He was sharing
a flat with the guitarist John Williams, with whom the teenaged Du Pré was to
make a recording. "She came to the flat to rehearse. We greeted her at the door
and she was unmistakeably shy. But when we walked down to the kitchen, she
strode like an Amazon. There was an immense confidence in her being and her
movement, but shyness in her personality. That struck me and never left me. I
see a parallel with these contradictory images in her music-making. Her depth of
perception, both human and musical, was incredible. But she felt inferior
because she hadn't had much ordinary education."
Nupen adds, "The conductor Sir
John Barbirolli says, in the film, 'Sometimes she's accused of excessive
emotions, but I love it. When you're young you should have an excess of
everything. If you haven't an excess, what are you going to pare off as the
years go by'? She was often told in rehearsals to 'tone it down a bit' and she'd
try to do so. But her conviction was so strong that once she got the bit between
her teeth, you couldn't stop her. She couldn't stop herself!"
Du Pré's "excessive emotion"
was one of many aspects of her playing that provoked the critics. Everything was
considered excessive - the tone, the way she "threw herself around" as she
played, the portamenti (slides between notes) - except for desired
qualities that were sometimes absent, such as understanding of form, appropriate
style and, occasionally, good intonation. The story goes that Du Pré learned the
Delius Cello Concerto without having a clue about the orchestral part, and
generally she had scant regard for the minor details in the score, such as
dynamics, that supposedly indicated the composer's intentions.
On one hand, as Wallfisch
points out, Du Pré's apparent shortcomings were a sign of something more
sinister than questionable musical taste. "In retrospect, one understands that a
lot of the extra energy she was putting in was simply because she couldn't feel
her fingers," he explains. "She was literally feeling her way between the
notes."
But also, as Kovacevich
recalls, she had something more significant to offer than precision. "Once I
raised some pedantic point in a rehearsal - the composer had written forte
and she was playing something else. She responded, 'Once the composer has
finished the piece, it's mine!'" That's not a politically correct comment, but
it works! It means you give all your love, commitment and joy to the music. As
for critics, I have the feeling that there is nothing more threatening to them
than something that is absolutely wonderful."
He has a point. Charisma as
compelling and universally communicative as Du Pré's is an enormous threat,
because its force renders academic correctness redundant. And academic
correctness is often the only asset that many other praised performers, and
critics, actually possess. A Jacqueline Du Pré comes along once in a lifetime -
someone with such personal radiance that no human or instrumental defects can
interfere with their power over the audience. Among musicians, perhaps only
Maria Callas or Vladimir Horowitz also fall into this bracket. None of them
would be acceptable to a musical competition jury; measurement against
"historically correct" slide-rules would do them no favours. But faced with the
charisma of a Jackie, such concerns evaporate. Her sound seems to go straight
from her soul to the listener's; nothing else really matters.
Christopher Nupen's films have
preserved much of Du Pré's personal magic, shot in an involving, informal manner
unprecedented in music documentaries at the time (A Portrait of Jacqueline du
Pré shows her on a train, gleefully strumming her cello like a guitar). It's
tempting to wonder whether they have even helped to create the Du Pré legend.
But Nupen insists that if she still strikes such a chord in people who never saw
her perform live, that is to her credit and not his. "We knew our craft. We were
using film in which we knew she was at her most expressive. But the thing that
makes the dynamite is that expressive power that she had. The fact that the DVD
is selling is such numbers is concrete evidence that people who never heard her
are still able to respond to her in the films. People who've never even heard of
her are buying it. That's glorious. And thank God I was there to film her."
He has now prepared a new
documentary that will include previously unscreened footage from his much-loved
films of Du Pré, Barenboim and their colleagues in Schubert's "Trout" Quintet,
Beethoven's "Ghost" Trio and other music. "Film captures our artists in a
complete way that not one of the other media can touch," he declares. "Jackie's
gone, but she isn't gone in the films. She once said to me, after she was ill,
'You cannot imagine what it feels like to me to know that I am playing for
people again in our film.''
When a very different film,
Hilary and Jackie, came out in 1998, controversy raged for months. Du Pré's
associates were profoundly upset; fans were jolted as a musical idol was
condemned for actions far removed from music. "Whether there is any truth in the
story or not," Wallfisch comments, "nobody needs to know these things." But now
it is film of the real Du Pré that tops the classical bestseller charts, while,
as is often the way with feature films, Hilary and Jackie is all but
forgotten by a public hungry for the next novelty. The indication could hardly
be clearer that Du Pré's personal magnetism and joyous playing are able to
survive just about anything.
Her legacy lives on in the wide
influence she cast over the musical world. Some agents and record companies
began to take the cello seriously as a solo instrument for the first time thanks
to her. She was a crucial inspiration for most of the finest British cellists
working today - Steven Isserlis, Robert Cohen, Alexander Baillie and more.
Wallfisch recalls: "We were all struck by not just her joie de vivre, but the
colossal ease of her playing. A lot of people can play well, but not with such
compulsive energy that you have to listen whether you like it or not."
Supposing she had not become
ill, where would Du Pré have been today? Would she, at 60, have been the world's
most revered cellist? Or would she have been content to cut back her
engagements, be Mrs Barenboim, raise a family? Elizabeth Wilson's biography of
her shows that at first Du Pré had doubts about becoming a cellist; that she had
hoped to have children; and that even before her illness, her stamina was not
particularly strong. But Wallfisch is convinced that, had multiple sclerosis not
intervened, "she would probably have played differently and would have continued
to be the most important British cellist of these 50 years". Kovacevich asserts:
"I think she would have played and played and played! And for her 60th birthday
she might have phoned up 60 friends and we'd all have flocked in and performed
60 pieces''
That was not to be. After the
progressive, agonising incapacity of her illness, Du Pré died on 19 October
1987, aged 42. Nupen was with her. "I was holding her right hand, and Bill
Pleeth was holding her left hand. Someone put on the Schumann Cello Concerto,
and Daniel [Barenboim], who was in a corner, said, 'Turn that off!' And then -
silence. Her life ended in unimaginable tragedy. But what she gave to the world
in her few best years was a glorious celebration of some of the most wonderful
things in human existence. As Kenneth Clark said in his Civilisation
series, 'Once art touches the soul in that way, it calls that soul back for the
rest of its days.'"
Kovacevich agrees. "I think
we'd still have known about Jackie if she'd played the snare drums. I remember
that Emmy Tillett, her agent, remarked that Jackie had not made more work for
other cellists: we'd fallen for her. The cello was simply her instrument. When I
think of Jackie, I think of a still from the film when she's smiling as she
plays: this person in love with what she's doing, ridiculously gifted and
enjoying sharing that gift."
Wallfisch's two days of
concerts in London and Birmingham, plus events on TV and BBC radio, are now set
to celebrate Du Pré's legacy on what would have been her 60th birthday. On 25
January Wallfisch and the pianist John York perform the complete Beethoven cello
sonatas at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The next day, the Symphony Hall in
Birmingham hosts a succession of concerts and discussions, beginning with a
lunchtime cello recital by Julian Lloyd Webber; next, Christopher Nupen talks
about his long association with Du Pré and introduces extracts from his films;
and David Fruwirth (violin), Jamie Walton (cello) and Daniel Grimwood (piano)
play Beethoven's "Ghost" Trio. After a pre-concert talk, the evening concert
begins with extracts from Nupen's film, after which 60 young cellists from
Birmingham schools and Birmingham Conservatoire perform en masse. An orchestral
programme then features the Elgar Cello Concerto with Wallfisch as soloist,
Elgar's Enigma Variations and the Beethoven Triple Concerto performed by
Wallfisch, the violinist Philippe Graffin and the pianist Jeremy Menuhin. The
English Symphony Orchestra is conducted by William Boughton. BBC Radio 3 is also
devoting the entire evening to a celebration of Du Pré's work.
Wallfisch's concerts will
donate all proceeds to the Multiple Sclerosis Society. Now, for the first time,
there is a glimmer of hope for those suffering this horrific disease. Recent
research has identified a genetic process in the brain that can at least
temporarily re-coat the nerves with myelin, the insulating substance damaged by
multiple sclerosis. Much more work is needed to transform this discovery into a
therapy, but it is the first sign of a breakthrough. Du Pré's high-profile
illness had an unprecedented impact on public awareness of the disease. Now the
memory of her may help to raise funding that could, one day, result in a
treatment. There could be no finer tribute.
Schon zu Lebzeiten genoss
die englische Cellistin Jacqueline du Pré (1945–1987) fast mythischen Rang. Eine
strahlende junge Frau, deren musikalisches Genie das Publikum verzauberte. Ihre
Ehe mit dem Dirigenten Daniel Barenboim, den sie 22-jährig heiratete, war für
die Musikwelt ein Triumph, der den Ruhm beider noch erhöhte. Der frühe Tod du
Prés, die im Alter von 28 Jahren an multipler Sklerose erkrankte, machte das
Bild einer Nationalheiligen perfekt.
Kratzer bekam das Bild
schon bald. Aufruhr in Musikerkreisen provozierten jedoch erst die Geschwister
Hilary und Piers du Pré, die 1997 das Buch „A Genius in the Family“
veröffentlichten. Das intime Familienporträt zeigte – ein Sündenfall – den
Mensch hinter dem Mythos. Dass das Buch mit Einwilligung der Autoren verfilmt
wurde, heizte die Wut noch an.
So viel Empörung
verwundert angesichts von „Hilary & Jackie“, dem Kinodebüt des Briten Anand
Tucker, und lässt vermuten, dass die Wortführer des Protestes eher die Sorge um
den ungetrübten Glanz der großen Musikwelt antrieb als das sichere Wissen darum,
dass die du Pré so nicht war, so egoistisch, verwöhnt und ungezogen, wie sie sie
in dem Streifen dargestellt fanden. Denn Tucker zeichnet ein sensibles Porträt,
diffamiert an keiner Stelle. Er erzählt von Aufstieg und tragischem Ende eines
Stars, von einer jungen Frau, die vom rebellischen Geist der 60er Jahre erfasst
wird, zwischen Aufbegehren, Ruhm und der Sehnsucht nach kleinbürgerlicher
Geborgenheit hin- und hergerissen ist.
Der Film beginnt mit der
wohlbehüteten Kindheit. Die ehrgeizige Mutter fördert das musikalische Talent
ihrer beiden Töchter, von denen zunächst die Flötespielende Hilary die Begabtere
zu sein scheint. In ihrem Eifer, es der großen Schwester nachzutun, erweist sich
jedoch Jackie als das Wunderkind, das sich rasch in Sphären hineinspielt, in die
ihr die Familie nicht mehr folgen kann. Dem unaufhaltsamen Trennungsprozess
widersetzen sich die Schwestern anfangs durch eine eifersüchtig überwachte Liebe
zueinander.
Doch die Symbiose
zerbricht mit Jackies zunehmendem Erfolg. Konsequenterweise erzählt der Film
beider Geschichten getrennt weiter. Die zweifache Sicht zeigt die Kluft, die
sich zwischen der gefeierten Cellistin und ihrer inzwischen mit dem
draufgängerisch-sympathischen Kiffer Finzi verheirateten Schwester auftut, und
unter der vor allem Jackie leidet.
Ihre wachsende innere Not
offenbart sich drastisch, als sie im Zustand des drohenden Zusammenbruchs in die
ländliche Idylle flüchtet, in die sich Hilary mit ihrer Familie zurückgezogen
hat. Dort bittet sie die Schwester, mit Kiffer Finzi schlafen zu dürfen; 16
Monate lang erträgt Hilary die Affäre. Vor allem diese Enthüllung empörte die
Kritiker und stachelte sie zu dem Vorwurf an, der Film konzentriere sich zu sehr
auf Sex, was er ganz gewiss nicht tut. Vielmehr zeigt diese Episode einen
Menschen in existenzieller Angst, die sich nur durch einen absoluten
Liebesbeweis lindern ließ.
Dass Tucker den Film mit
einem abendfüllenden Konzertprogramm unterlegt, ist bei dieser Künstlerbiografie
wohl unvermeidlich. Auch das von Barenboim dirigierte Cellokonzert von Edgar
Elgar, dessen Einspielung durch du Prés einzigartige Interpretation zum
Bestseller avancierte, setzt Tucker noch einmal in Szene.
Trotzdem driftet er nie in
Sentimentalität ab. Das ist auch ein Verdienst seiner hervorragenden
Hauptdarstellerinnen. Rachel Griffiths („Muriel's Wedding“) spielt die
sanftmütige, opferbereite Hilary mit großer Empathie. Und der Kino-Shooting-Star
Emily Watson verkörpert Jacqueline mit Leib und Seele. Mit bewegender
Eindringlichkeit zeigt sie die anfängliche Freude über den Erfolg, den derben
Humor, das unangepasste Temperament, dann die Zweifel, die Einsamkeit und
schließlich den entwürdigenden körperlichen und seelischen Verfall. Dafür gab's,
trotz des Aufruhrs in der Musikwelt, eine Oscar-Nominierung.
REGINA URBAN
