Jacqueline du Pré: Genius and Tragedy

She had sensitivity and instinctive understanding of music, like very few, and was therefore able to make every musical performance so alive that you had the feeling that she was actually inventing the music at that very moment.

In some ways, I think she was probably the greatest human being I ever met.

Without any pretense, she was simple... ..she was loving, she was carefree.

She smiled, we all knew her as Smiley.

That was her nickname.

I think that when it comes to the playing, the actual playing itself, there was a natural gift that she was born with, um, that is hard to explain.

The only way I can explain it, a little bit, is essentially in three words - the mind, the heart and the stomach.

She played mainly from the stomach.

HE CHUCKLES First of all, she had complete control over her instrument.

Jackie could, in the last minute, without thinking, do things musically just because that had to be, in that particular moment.

Another person would have to practice eight hours to make the same rubato.

Those people who weren't fortunate enough to hear her live missed an experience that is indescribable.

Some things, very few, but some things are beyond words, and Jacqueline du Pr was a creature beyond words.

I long for it up.

Up!

Just imagine, just imagine!

Look, I mean, just look.

YO-YO MA: Jacqueline du Pr did not conform to anything that had come before or since, but she shared the unmistakable qualities that inhabit other internationally acclaimed artists.

It's an all-consuming profession that requires not only prodigious talent, but the character and will to develop it.

The demands are high and are met by just a few in any generation.

At 22, du Pr was already among them.

She was also married to the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim and, together, this glamorous and musically charged couple would devour the cello and piano repertoire.

Oh, this is incredibly funny.

A Frog He Went A-Courting, by Hindemith.

DANIEL: This is all Hindemith.

- Yes, the whole thing?

- The whole thing.

This is a sonata for cello and piano or two celli alone, by Kraft.

You know, this was...

This was Haydn's pupil.

He wrote a cello concerto.

You should be telling me about these things, not the other way around.

Well, I had to marry you to find out about them.