Jacqueline du Pré and the cello

THE name Jacqueline du Pré is synonymous with the cello, yet her performing career—an intense burst of brilliance—was over by the time she was 28, when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). Du Pré, who died aged 42 in 1987, would have been 80 on January 26 this year. ‘I am quite breathless when I think about her and it’s hard not to become emotional,’ said the percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie in Radio 4’s Great Lives. ‘The music belonged to her, the cello belonged to her and there was no holding back.’ Aged four, du Pré heard the cello being played on Children’s Hour and asked her mother for one. She left school at 15 and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with the distinguished cellist…

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Country Life (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 12, 2025

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