Jacqueline Du Pre: A Life

I have just finished the du Pré biography and what insights I've gained, not only about music, performance, concert and recording life in the 60s, and the cello, but also from reading about her mother, her family background, her isolated childhood, her alleged revolt against her parents by converting to Judaism ...and about multiple sclerosis. Carol Easton's book is about music, yes, but mostly about du Pré! How domineering was her mother who regularly visited her after she was diagnosed but later become aloof and distant; and how Jackie fell into surrounding herself with mother images and domination-substitutes earlier: Barenboim (Type-A personality with unbounded energy), "The Schubert 'Trout' Quintet" (jet-set superstars), along with the grueling and dictatorial pressures of concert and recording schedules. MS stopped all of it! She found a sympathetic confidant in her therapist who suddenly and prematurely died at age 50, then a kinship with another Freudian analyst. Just a few years into her marriage, and at her height, she wished nothing more than to lead a normal life and raise a family, but she had little skills in it and no background to draw from having grown-up sheltered to focus on a concentrated life with the cello - nor could she remove herself from the plateau she and Daniel now occupied together. In an indirect way, she pleased her mother's ambition for her if only because she could please herself in the music - not because she was promotional of her prodigious talent, but because she was profoundly in love with music. If she lost herself and became "someone else" when playing the cello, as one friend said, maybe it was because she truly became herself when playing. After she could no longer play and the disease overcame her body, her mother practically disappeared - for all practical purposes - from her life, "as though they were perfect strangers". Her husband and mother-in-law, Aida, did not abandon her, but Daniel continued his career away in Paris nevertheless, and in later years the relationship grew more distant to one that became for the music world, "an open secret" - Barenboim's other life with pianist Helena Bachkirev. She was known as "Smiley" to the Barenboim gang, but privately knew herself to be complex, deeply sensitive, soul-searching and vulnerable, traits her shyness never revealed. To others, she could pass for a simple, wholesome farm girl who enjoyed practical jokes and children. The cello became her soulmate in a sense, then Barenboim entered and the two were swept into total love and produced total music - the Camelot couple of music, as TIME wrote at the time. But MS began earlier than is publicly discussed, and after diagnosis and officially abandoning a concert life, her brief career and twelve years of recordings were not forgotten, only she, the invalid, was forgotten by the public. She could no longer see with blurred vision but heard the passers-by, "Isn't that Jacqueline du Pré? I thought she was

I read this biography of Jaqueline du Pre when it first came out in 1990. The author portrays her as a wonderful, talented cello player whose career is tragically ended by debilitating disease. This very positive portrait of Jaqueline has you falling in love with her, and then terribly saddened by her fate. Then came Hilary and Jackie, the movie, which portray her as a neurotic jerk who seems perpetually depressed, and tired of her cello. In the Easton biography Ms. du Pre's husband is the philandering one, and no mention is made of a tryst between Jackie and Hilary's husband. I don't know. Maybe this book is pure hagiography, i.e. the author is enamored of JdP, and ignores anything negative. Yet is interesting to have a view of this renowned cellist that is different than the movie. I really enjoyed reading the book, and as a lover of Ms. Du Pre's music, maybe this positive image is the one I want to stick in my mind.

This is a great book about a great 'cellist. It is a welcome change in the world of tabloid biographies. Easton does a wonderful job in writing about an all to often neglected and forgotten genius