Television

Celebrate the enigmatic cellist whose career was cruelly curtailed by multiple sclerosis at age 28.

Jacqueline du Pré: Genius and Tragedy airs Friday, March 28 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the WXXI app.

Those who know, consider Jacqueline du Pré one of the greatest cellists of all time – certainly in the top three – despite a career that was cruelly curtailed by multiple sclerosis at just twenty-eight years old. The force of nature took away her prodigious gift and her joy of performing and she endured fourteen years of unremitting illness. However, during her short time on the international concert platform – about a decade – she had the musical world at her feet, with an expressive style that cast a spell on anyone who saw her perform. Introduced and narrated by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Jacqueline du Pre: Genius and Tragedy, tells the story of who she was and why she was such an extraordinary musician.

It is full of candid moments off stage and in rehearsal, together with powerful concert performances. The Elgar Cello Concerto would become her signature piece and the benchmark against which all other renditions would be measured; its lamenting melody, inescapably resonating with her own tragic demise. In swinging 1960s London, the Beatles were topping the pop charts, but Jacqueline du Pre was the poster child for a new golden generation of artists and friends, who injected a youthful excitement into a staid industry a classical ‘rat pack’ that included Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta and her husband, Daniel Barenboim. As a glamourous and musically charged couple, Barenboim and du Pre were like a modern version of Clara and Robert Schumann; together, they devoured the cello and piano repertoire and the recordings they made continue to delight audiences across the globe. Du Pre was a blithe spirit, known to her friends as ‘Smiley’ but on stage with her cello, she could communicate the most profound feelings, found in the depths of great music. Our interviews provide an incomparable insight from those who knew du Pre best, including RuthAnn Cannings, who cared for her throughout her illness. Described as, “beyond words,” du Pre’s innate abilities confounded even her fellow musicians, who struggled to rationalize how music flowed so naturally from her. She studied under the greats – Casals, Tortelier, and Rostropovich – but it is sequences with her teacher William Pleeth, her “cello daddy,” that provide some of our most intimate and engaging footage. The affection for Jacqueline du Pre and the wonder at her playing remains undiminished, nearly forty years after her death in 1987.

This film is presented as part of Move to Include^TM, an award-winning national initiative to promote disability inclusion, representation, and accessibility in public media.