Jacqueline du Pré – Favourite Cello Concertos, Dvořák, Elgar, Haydn, Schumann

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Jacqueline Du Pré: Favourite Cello Concertos
All through her far-too-brief career, cellist Jacqueline du Pré exhibited an almost oracular power of communication. Her performances bristled with the type of brilliant electricity that could change lives and convert listeners to a lifelong love of music. Happily, it’s conceivable to experience a sense of that power from the recordings du Pré completed before more than one sclerosis halted her career as a performer in the early 1970s. This set provides a splendid portrait–at bargain price–of du Pré’s unmistakable personality: the astonishingly original yet convincing phrasing, raw energy, and ability to make her instrument sound uncannily like a human voice (du Pré was once in spite of everything a favored student of Mstislav Rostropovich). Her rendition of Haydn’s Concerto in C is clearly cast in a romantic–and this present day perhaps retro–mold, yet du Pr&eacute’s big, bold tone carries the musical line forward with exhilarating presence. It is a demeanor that proves especially reassuring for the quirkily mercurial inventions of Boccherini. Yet du Pré most indelibly leaves her signature on the work that became her hallmark, Edward Elgar’s E Minor Concerto, grafting a deeply personal level of expression onto the score’s rich post-World War I melancholy. In the Schumann, du Pré makes an eloquently passionate protagonist. A similar sense of excitement is to be heard in Dvorák’s Concerto–performed near the end of her career–above all in the flame of inspiration she evidently sparks from the orchestra in the serene close of its slow movement. It is a supremely rewarding collection for the beginner and aficionado alike. –Thomas May