[Piano music] ♪ [Musician laughs, other musician whistles] Yo-Yo Ma: Jacqueline du Pré stopped playing the cello when she was just 28 years old, with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

♪ After 14 years of unremitting illness, she died in 1987, aged 42.

♪ One of the greatest instrumentalists of the 20th century, du Pré was the golden girl of classical music... ♪ a global star emerging from the cultural revolution of Swinging London in the 1960s.

♪ Interviewer: Why is the cello repertoire not as big as the piano nor fiddle repertoire?

I don't know.

Ha ha!

Yo-Yo Ma: To her friends, she was known as Smiley.

And because her story is so unusual and her gift so unexplainable, she remains a vibrant figure in the public imagination, with levels of affection given to very, very few... ♪ and, of course, because her life ended in such unimaginable tragedy.

♪ The girl who knew that she had a gift with endless possibilities grew into the woman who watched the force of nature robbing her slowly and mercilessly of her ability to express that very gift.

♪ Hello.

I'm Yo-Yo Ma, and this is the Davidov cello.

It's a Stradivarius, made in the early 1700s and played and owned by Jacqueline du Pré.

Whenever I play it, I feel the privilege of being tangibly and tactilely connected to her, to her cello sound, and to her soul.

The term genius sometimes is bandied about as something we don't quite understand, and in Jackie's case, I think it actually applies because we use the term "transcending technique."

Jackie was able to take that to the Nth degree.

The scaffolding of technique was so secure that she could leap dozens of steps into, I think, the spirit world, which is herself-- her sense of joy, her sense of abandon, her sense of being in the moment, her sense of just celebrating life, being alive.

And that is what I think all art aspires toward, and that music is a translation of that, that we feel.

And the fact that she achieves that is her genius.

It's an incredible honor to lend my voice to celebrate, in this film, the life and art of this extraordinary musician, who continues to inspire people all over the world today.

♪ Yo-Yo Ma: On the 21st of March 1962, Jacqueline du Pré gave her first performance of the Elgar "Cello Concerto" at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

♪ She was just 17, seemingly far too young to make the most of an autumnal work with all the hallmarks of late maturity.

On the following morning, Neville Cardus, one of England's most distinguished writers on music, described the work as a "swan song of rare and vanishing beauty."

♪ And he ended his review with these words: "Those actually present "were witness on the first day of spring "to an early blossoming in Miss du Pré's playing "and such a beautiful blossoming as this year or any other year is likely to know for a long time to come."

Ah, yes.

[Vocalizing] So it would be... ♪ Da da!

♪ ♪ Da da ♪ I see.

Yes, I see.

Yes.

Actually, some fingering on that would be useful.

214.

Interviewer: How long is it since you've played with him?

♪ It must be, um... ♪ I should think it's 10 or 11 years.

[Vocalizing] ♪ 1, 1, 4, 3 ♪ Yo-Yo Ma: In du Pré's young hands, Elgar's melancholy masterpiece would find its benchmark...

Yes.

♪ Dun dun.... ♪ and a musician who found a deep connection to its inherent despair.

Comes in.

But she's very helpful... Yo-Yo Ma: She is seen here at 35, working with friend and fellow cellist Moray Welsh on interpretation and fingering.

Yes, we're trying to make an edition of the Elgar "Concerto" and put down what I felt the piece was about because it's something I've always wanted to do.

♪ Yo-Yo Ma: Published in 1919, after the First World War and full of anguish, it is Elgar's final work and one of the world's great cello concertos, a lamenting farewell to a world that would never return.

♪ It could be quite difficult because if one's been very busy doing something one's loved very much, it's hard to try and rebuild something that feels worthwhile.

So that's really been my job--rebuilding.

But I do miss it.

I had a good time.

[du Pré vocalizing with piece] ♪ Hey!

[Laughter] Where have you been since I saw you?

Oh, my God.

I've been so many places.

So good to be back.

Woman, voice-over: Jacqueline du Pré was a creature like none other.

The problem with talking about Jackie is there is no frame of reference.

You see?

Both musically, cellistically, as a personality, you can't compare her to anyone.

Jackie didn't fall into any particular category.

It was 10:00 on a Thursday.

There was a rehearsal.

"Oh, OK. What am I playing?

Oh, I'm playing Dvorak today.

OK, Dvorak."

Ha ha!

If it was Elgar, it'd be Elgar.

It didn't matter.

Already it was done.

It was done before she even-- I think she was done before she was born.

Ha ha!

[Tuning instruments] Man: 5, take 2.

♪ Man: I always heard in her music the person she is.

For me, I think, music never lies, you know.

The way she played, the reason why she moves while so much is because there's something so pure and so truthful in her.

Madeleine Dinkel: And it's better still when you get the electric light on.

And...you see, this sort of black orchestra.

Oh, that's marvelous.

I find it quite covers... ♪ ♪ Man: Jacqueline du Pré is one of the musicians who has had the biggest impact and influence on me since I was very young.

I guess on my love of music, and it has an impact on me all the time, and it's amazing to have a musician that I'm able to constantly go back and listen to.

And I know her playing very intimately and know her story.

And those two things are very, very powerful things for sure.

Take 1, 51.

♪ ♪ Man: 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.

♪ Pinchas Zukerman: 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.

Man: Something for balance.

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

♪ Zukerman: The only way I can explain it a little bit is it's essentially in three words: the mind, the heart, and the stomach.

She played mainly from the stomach.

Ha ha!

♪ Man: 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 and that particular moment.

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

Ha!

♪ Toby Perlman: 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 Pré was a creature beyond words.

I long for it up, up, you see.

Just imagine.

Just imagine it.

Look.

I mean, just look.

Then you could... [indistinct].

♪ Yo-Yo Ma: Jacqueline du Pré 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 Pré 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.

Should be the same thing as me.

Just have to... Oh, this is incredibly funny.

"A Frog, He Went a-Courting" by Hindemith.

This is all Hindemith.

Yes.

Everything.

The whole thing.

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

So, you know... And that's your theme.

This was Haydn's pupil.

Yes?

So he wrote a cello concerto... You should be telling me about this thing, not the other way around.

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

Scene 50, take 1.

I don't think the family ties in any way have anything to do with the musical affinity.

And the fact that we feel music so much alike has nothing to do with the fact that we got married or anything like that.

You know, it sounds so romantic to say two people are in love, so therefore they play together very well.

I know lots of people who play very well and they're not in love, and I know lots of people who are in love and don't play well together.

So it's something that is really completely different.

[Indistinct conversation] Barenboim, voice-over: We have planned things in such a way that we don't have to be separated for any long periods, and we are doing all the long tours together.

♪ Yo-Yo Ma: Jacqueline du Pré was born in Oxford in 1945, the middle child of three, into a very musical family.

Early talents for dancing, singing, and drawing were fostered by her mother, who was a concert pianist, but her talents took no special direction until she first heard the cello.

Jacqueline: And I heard it on the radio when I was very small, when I was four, and although I don't remember the sound at all, I liked it so much, apparently, that I asked my mother to give me the thing that made that sound, and she did.

She gave me a big, big cello, which I learned to play.

Woman: I knew she was musical because she could tap rhythms that I tapped for her from a very early age, before she was a year old, and she could also sing in tune before she could talk.

And so I got her an enormous cello-- much, much too big for her-- and she was completely lost behind it.

And then I wrote some tunes for her to play.

Jacqueline: Well, she was marvelous because she has a great talent for teaching small children.

And she added words to these tunes.

And on the opposite side of the page, she drew beautiful pictures illustrating the tunes.

♪ And she used to do these while I was asleep, and I could hardly wait till the morning came because in the morning, I'd wake up and find this beautiful thing waiting for me, and then we'd rush down and play it together.

And that really made me very excited about the cello.

♪ Were you still 5?

Yes.

♪ Jumping, swimming ♪ ♪ Swimming in the water ♪ ♪ There is froggy playing ♪ ♪ With his daughter ♪ ♪ Down and up and up again ♪ ♪ They're having lots of fun ♪ ♪ Just jumping in the rain ♪ Yo-Yo Ma: Age 6, du Pré went to the London Cello School.

Her exceptional ear and musical memory, allied with a steely determination, made an immediate impression.

Iris: She had tremendous power of concentration right from the very beginning, and an instinctive feeling for phrasing and for the instrument itself.

And when she played, she had that ability to hold the audience.

She compelled people to listen to her.

Um, after four years at the Cello School, we knew she had to have a long-term teacher.

And it was then that I thought of Bill Pleeth.

I'd always admired his playing.

♪ Man: The most impressive part was in the early stages, the things she could do already but she hadn't done.

I mean, she'd already come sort of playing nice small child pieces, you know, sort of moderately difficult.

And it was very fascinating, very exciting to sort of put something in front of her that was much more advanced than she'd ever done, to see this sort of child go straight at it like that.

It was like hitting a ball against a wall, and it always returned.

Of course, the more you hit, the more it would return, so that you never had a sort of blank period.

♪ Jacqueline: He took me as his pupil, and I was very, very happy, very much in awe of him because I was very small and he was a great cellist.

Anyway, from there on, we had an enormously happy relationship for seven years.

He was a marvelous teacher, and formed completely the spine of my cello playing.

♪ Man: Very good.

Good work, you both.

Interviewer: Would you say now that when you first saw her that you could see the potential was there?

Yes.

The-- you could see it, um... quite strongly on the first day.

And as the next few lessons went on, it just sort of unfolded itself like a flower, so much, that you knew then that you had a sort of endlessness and that everything was possible.

Man: 231, take 2.

♪ Man: Jacqueline du Pré was a force of nature.

Those of us who were lucky enough to see her-- I think I saw her 3 times-- were imprinted by her presence.

We knew exactly we were in the presence of something quite extraordinary.

She was a comet, both in the brevity of her appearance and in the brightness that she shed on all around her.

You can search through one's whole memory of watching performers, and the one that springs to the fore is Jackie.

Barenboim: She had an extremely strong personality, as everybody knows, musically, highly exuberant.

It was not just a question of virtuoso, loud, full of temperament.

Even in the quiet moments, there was something very, very, you know, like a lens, like a film lens.

It was the kind of personality that absolutely forced you to concentrate on her.

♪ I had heard of Jackie du Pré, but one is a little bit suspicious of these very famous people.

And this gorgeous blonde, not an elegant creature in any way, very loose-limbed young lady came into the studio, and I was riveted to her, absolutely knocked out.

Instant.

But not only me.

The whole orchestra was silenced, totally under her spell immediately.

♪ Just the beauty of the sound, the immense intensity, and the physical presence was very, very powerful.

I first heard her play a Schumann concerto in New York.

And it was-- it was phenomenal.

Again, a phenomenal way of-- I never saw anyone play physically the instrument the way she did.

There was no fingerboard.

There's no such thing as positions.

There is no such thing as playing, "Oh, I think I'll play this phrase now on the D string."

It was on the D string because it said so in the music.

Or it's because "I like it like that.

I think it sounds better that way."

And I think Schumann would have said, "My goodness.

I wish I could have thought of that."

[Laughs] It's true.

♪ Jacqueline: It was always a source of wonder that when I put the bow onto the string, it made a beautiful sound.

Mind you, as I got a little older and the first fascination grew off, I just wanted to go and play with other children, as any normal child would.

But practicing was never too much of an effort.

And when I went to Bill Pleeth, then I became very studious and worked extremely hard.

♪ Very nice.

Do you want to do the next one?

Yes.

That's my favorite, actually.

It's your favorite, is it?

Yo-Yo Ma: Within a year of her studies with Pleeth, still only 11, du Pré became the youngest recipient of the Suggia Gift, a valuable scholarship that would pay for her musical education.

The chairman of the judging panel was conductor and cellist Sir John Barbirolli.

I remember vividly the day Jackie came before us, and one of my chief colleagues on the panel is Lionel Tertis, one of the greatest of all English instrumentalists.

And I remember that Jackie had been playing for about 2 or 3 minutes, and I turned to Lionel and I said, "This is it," because such heaven-sent gifts don't appear every day.

Aha!

"Jacqueline is inclined to be too easily satisfied with her efforts."

[Laughter] Pleeth: Jackie was about 13, I think, and I said, "Now.

Jackie, we'll get the Piatti Caprices," you know, which are sort of equivalent of the Paganini on the fiddle, and the Elgar.

And this was on a Wednesday.

She had one Wednesday lesson and one Saturday one.

And on Saturday, I said, "Well, Jackie, have you got them?"

"Yes."

She said, "I haven't done much."

I said, "No?

Well, we'll crack things open and see what you've done."

Number one caprice she played fluently from memory and 1 1/2 movements of the Elgar-- pretty impeccable, completely from memory.

She must have got the music on, I would say, a Thursday, a Thursday afternoon.

Friday, she was free to practice, naturally.

10:00 was her lesson, Saturday morning, so you can work that out.

Man: 10, take 1.

OK. Tell me, did you play all these little piano pieces that you play now then, too?

Jacqueline: No.

I know... Yo-Yo Ma: During the next few years, du Pré won most of the available prizes.

But such a talent demands exclusivity.

And at 15, the decision was made to take her out of the school system with no formal qualifications.

♪ It cast her further adrift from other children her age to focus on a career that now seemed inevitable.

♪ Good cello fingering... She was an isolated child.

And even when she went to school-- I spoke to people who she went to school with-- and they always felt she lived in her own world and she had problems communicating.

I mean, a lot of people have that, and they grow, and, of course, as you mature.

And Jackie found her own niche, and she found the sort of people she wanted to communicate with.

You don't necessarily find them at school.

She was such an outstanding person, but she was not given a chance to lead a normal life.

She was a stranger somehow in the world.

And her life was never normal, not as a child, not as an adolescent, and then not as a grown woman.

♪ Jacqueline, voice-over: Schooling was very much cut short.

I won a certain scholarship, which paid for my musical education when I was ten, but that meant that there wasn't time to go to school as a normal pupil.

So, although I kept up a certain amount of study, I'm not the most educated.

♪ Oh, bravo!

Now you can... Elizabeth Wilson: And here came out this part of her.

She kind of doubted herself.

And, you know, having written a book and talked to a lot of people, I realized that these doubts were something that accompanied her throughout her life.

And I think although she appeared so sure, particularly with a cello on platform, she had incredible doubts about whether she was good enough, whether she was able to do this.

And she thought about it.

She thought she couldn't.

And it was a bit like that in life, too.

She would never have a claim that she could do something, although she got on and did it.

Yes.

You want some of these grapes, madam?

Yes, please.

Thank you very much.

Toby Perlman: You see, she had a peculiar life, where she developed in a peculiar way, and she didn't learn what we all learn going to school, You know, how to give the teacher what he wants, not necessarily the truth.

But what she actually did was she just gave them the truth of who she was, the truth of what she saw, and, musically, the truth of what she felt and what she heard.

And because she was great, that truth was a great truth.

You know, we all miss that.

Here's your change, madam.

Thank you very much.

10 and 1... Barenboim: She was totally, totally innocent in the best sense of the word.

I think that everybody who was close to her was terribly attracted to her and, in a subconscious way, wish they could be like she was, because this combination of intelligence and perception, et cetera, and the childlike side of her nature made her fearless.

Well, because of her sweetness that was so sincere, you just had to meet Jackie, and you were all for her.

On top of it, then you heard her play also.

So it was, like you say in America, that double whammy.

♪ Barenboim: There was not an unkind vein in her body.

There was nothing petty about her.

She was not jealous.

She was not envious because she always felt herself both and simultaneously below and above that other person.

♪ [Man speaks indistinctly, Jacqueline laughs] And in some ways, she felt inadequate because she thought she knew less about so many things than this person, and at the same time, she instinctively knew she was superior because she had a feeling, a sort of a direct line, you know.

♪ There's so many fantastic aspects with such a talent.

I mean, her musical memory, her development, her dynamic, her personality, sort of inner burning, you know, sort of qualities as an artist, lyricist, on all these points.

I mean, they are so endless apart from the sort of intriguing aspects of unfolding this.

Yo-Yo Ma: In William Pleeth, du Pré had found a mentor who could extract the most out of her talent and skillfully channel but not diminish her emotive expression.

Jacqueline, voice-over: I studied with him till I was 17.

In between, when I was 15, I went and took part in two master classes with Casals in Zermatt, which was very interesting.

But I was a rather bossy 15 year old and very proud of my own teacher, and I didn't want to accept too easily what Casals said to me, even though he was Casals.

[Pleeth speaking indistinctly] It's wonderful doing dances...

This wasn't gonna be--it could have come out any way.

Well, it's sort of semi-tragic, isn't it?

Yo-Yo Ma: Wary of subjecting her to public scrutiny too soon, she was 16 when both teacher and pupil felt ready for an official debut at London's Wigmore Hall.

Jacqueline: It was a big occasion for me.

I'd never really given an important concert in London, and I was beginning with a Handel Sonata, and during the first movement, the A string began very, very slowly to unwind and the string got flatter and flatter, and I was playing higher and higher, trying to compensate.

And in the end, the whole thing went straight down, and I had to start again... [Laughs] which, in fact, was a great help because I was nervous for the big event.

And after that, having gained an extra ounce of sympathy from the audience, it was easier and friendlier to start again.

Yo-Yo Ma: In the following year, 1962, she began her special association with the Elgar "Concerto," when she performed at London's Royal Festival Hall in March and then again at the Royal Albert Hall for her Proms debut in August.

She also performed on BBC television, accompanied by her mother, and there's no mistaking the authority.

♪ Iris, voice-over: It was this time, just when she'd had tremendous success, that she began to have serious doubts as to whether she was good enough to carry on with this tremendous career, and she became very depressed.

We knew fundamentally she would get over it.

She was determined eventually to be a cellist.

She fought it.

She took up all sorts of other activities.

She painted, she fenced, she did yoga, all sorts of things combined right off.

And it wasn't until years later that she wrote to us and said, "Now I have decided I shall become a cellist."

I was changing from a child into an adult, and work took on a different kind of aspect.

I didn't have that many engagements, and I felt a little bit lost.

Then, when I was 17, I went to Paris and studied performance with Tortelier.

And later on, I went to Moscow to have some lessons with Rostropovich.

And both these stays with these two cellists were very exciting and interesting.

And I loved being in Paris and Moscow, but I've always looked upon Pleeth as my real teacher and as my sort of cello daddy, in fact.

♪ Yo-Yo Ma: Under William Pleeth's guidance, she was launched onto the world stage.

The popular image of the young girl with a blithe spirit and heaven-sent gift would quickly become that of the truly great artist.

♪ John Barbirolli: It's been a wonderful experience for me to see this tremendous, wonderful, natural cello talent flower as it has and flower musically as well as instrumentally.

You know, she sometimes now is accused of excessive emotions and things, but I love it because when you're young, you still have an excess of everything.

If you haven't an excess, what are you going to pare off as the years go by?

♪ Yo-Yo Ma: From the earliest age, du Pré brandished her cello with a dramatic and physical style.

The so-called "excessive emotions" were all part of what possessed her to communicate the music to her audience.

♪ Zukerman: The sound that came out of her being.

It wasn't the cello.

It was really her being.

It was just completely natural.

It had no inhibitions.

At that moment, there was no other way to hear that phrase.

When you went away and you started thinking about it, you said, "Wow!

That was amazing."

Genius.

Just pure, unadulterated talent, genius, a phenomenon.

I mean, she is music itself.

I mean, she has such a huge soul.

I mean, the music just pour out of her.

You never hear a phrasing like that.

I mean, it is so big.

The playing is so big.

I mean, I can only say it's big.

She's one in a million.

I mean, I don't think I know in my lifetime another musician like her.

♪ Wilson: Somebody who is so in touch with human emotion all round.

It's a sign of a great artist as well because if you're dealing with the kind of emotion, what she put into her performance, say, the Elgar "Concerto," and the kind of tragedy she was able to express-- well, the whole gamut of human emotion-- obviously, it was something that she understood in real life as well.

Hugh Maguire: She was not the sort of girl that practiced.

She just played.

She seemed to have little difficulties, but she was also the most wonderful swindler.

I mean, she would get away with everything just by a toss of her head or a gesture.

You know perfectly well there are lots of flaws in her performance.

She wasn't a sort of perfect creature.

She wasn't chromium plated in any sense.

She really went for the guts of the music.

Absolutely.

75, take 1.

I suppose I first started becoming busy about two years after my debut in London.

I was about 18, 19, and I think it was my first taste, really, of moving around the world, and I enjoyed very, very much.

I always have done.

More and more, in fact, as time goes on.

The only spanner in the works is the cello, that beastly cello, which causes so much hostility wherever I go.

♪ Hello.

How are you?

Man: She was something that literally sort of bounced into my life.

I mean, she was much larger than life, like great musicians sometimes are.

And when she sat down and played the cello, work in our workshop, where they were repairing things or supposed to be, just stopped, and everybody came to listen because you had to listen to the sound that she made.

Great.

It's good to see it again.

Do you want to play a few notes and have a go?

Jacqueline: Sure.

♪ Jacqueline: I was called up by a fiddle dealer in London called Charles Beare, and he told me that there was an instrument waiting for me at his shop for me to try, and, if I liked it, it was going to be given to me as an anonymous gift.

And I went along and saw it and fell in love with it.

Well, we were asked by a firm of solicitors to look out for a really first-class Stradivari cello to be purchased for her use.

This we did, and after some time, we heard that the famous Davidov was going to be coming up for sale in New York.

This is a cello that was made in 1712, that had spent about 35 years in New York, and before that, its history is known back into the middle of the 19th century, when it was in Russia.

It belonged to one count, who sold it to another Russian count, we're told, for a large sum of money, another cello and the finest horse in his stable.

And the second count presented it to Karl Davidov, a leading cellist of his day in Saint Petersburg, as a birthday present.

It's one of about a pattern of about 20 surviving cellos.

And I think, really, it's probably among the 3 or 4 finest cellos in the world.

Beare, voice-over: She had an extraordinary way of producing tone on a cello that seemed to come absolutely naturally, but the sounds that she could draw out of that instrument I've actually never heard anything like the variety of sound.

And she'd play F on the D string, and she would play that same note, maybe for two minutes, maybe for three.

You lost all sense of time.

And she got into that note-- more expression than a lot of people get into performance of a concert-- with vibrato, without vibrato, with all the various bow pressures, with this, with that.

She made music out of one note.

Take 1.

Jacqueline: Can we come in?

Yes, come in.

That's marvelous.

Yes, come.

Jacqueline: How are you?

This is so nice.

Talk together?

No, Daniel.

This is only for balance.

We can talk about it later.

Barenboim, voice-over: The way we met and the way we got to know each other, I'm afraid, is a very unromantic tale.

The first thing we had in common was glandular fever.

At that time, we were supposed to make the record of the Haydn & Boccherini concertos.

So, I mean, there had been some sort of professional contact over the telephone, and I phoned her up and I said, you know, who I was, and that I heard she had glandular fever.

And we started comparing notes.

You know, who was more swollen under the ear and things like that.

And this went on for a few days, and we never met because I left and she went elsewhere.

And it was not until Christmas of '66 that we met at Fou Ts'ong's house, who was a common friend of ours, and in a sort of very musical way, instead of saying, "Good evening," we played Brahms.

Ha ha.

This is how we got to know each other.

♪ [Indistinct] ♪ Jacqueline: What's wrong with that?

Nothing wrong with it.

Barenboim, voice-over: So I'm sure she had played the Brahms E minor sonata many times.

So had I.

Therefore, this was the strange thing about it.

We had the feeling as if we had always played it together, because we felt so exactly the same about the music, although we were playing it for the first time.

And in many ways, the piece was there for the first time again for us.

So it was a sort of integration of past, present, and future.

♪ Yo-Yo Ma: The musical affinity brought them quickly together, and six months later, in June 1967, they would marry in Jerusalem during the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War.

Well, Daniel and I were pretty involved with the business as it all went along, and we were reading the papers assiduously for, well, for as long as it all went on, until he had a phone call from Israel saying that his parents thought the war was going to begin this evening--that evening, which was, in fact, ten days before the war.

Danny, without any thought at all, was getting ready to go, and I wanted to go to be with him because I felt my place was with him.

♪ Jacqueline: We wanted to try and do something, and we started giving concerts.

And, in fact, we played every day.

♪ It was, in fact, a marvelous atmosphere to play in because the people who came to the concerts were the womenfolk.

Their husbands or sons or fathers were probably in the army, just waiting.

And one felt that music was something enormously wanted.

♪ Narrator: Without doubt, the most personally moving moment for Israeli troops was the capture of the Old City of Jerusalem, the location of an ancient Jewish holy place.

While Russia and other Iron Curtain countries labeled Israel's victory as aggression, insisting she pull back to original boundaries, Israeli Premier Eshkol, equally adamant, insists Israel alone will determine her future.

Jacqueline: We played at a concert, which was the victory concert, in fact, in Jerusalem.

And then because we'd been through so much together and because it felt the right time, the right place, and everybody was feeling so happy and, well, we got married.

[Camera shutter clicks] ♪ Jacqueline: You know, we weren't going to get married till September, but it all felt right and we couldn't resist it, and I must say we've been very happy.

I was in Tel Aviv the day they were married, and it fell to me to propose the wedding toast to these two young kids.

♪ Jacqueline: And I find that marriage and career go together very easily because I've never been a career demon.

I love playing the cello and playing to people, but I've never wanted to do it every day and every hour of my life.

I love being married.

I love being an ordinary person, doing the chores around the household and looking after my husband.

All these things are a source of joy to me, and I find that I'm very happy doing a good balance of both.

♪ [Jacqueline and Suvi Raj Grub laugh] Suvi Raj Grub: There you are.

That's all right.

Not bad for a beginner.

[Laughter] [Indistinct] [Laughs] [Suvi speaking indistinctly] [Laughter] Shh.

♪ Hey, that's not bad for a sound...

Very nice.

Beautiful.

Barenboim, voice-over: She has sometimes a rather free idea of tempi and of tempi fluctuations.

It's so natural to her that it doesn't dawn on her sometimes that we mortals have difficulties in following her.

But it's the sort of difficulties that make music making interesting and adventurous.

Now... ♪ Ah?

Barenboim: Let's go and play this.

Suvi Raj Grub: Yes...

So are you happy with the sound?

Absolutely, again.

Effort.

Fine.

Yes.

You tell us when you're ready.

It's marvelous, yes, and that's marvelous... what's going...

I think it's wonderful.

See you soon.

Right.

Suvi Raj Grub: Over to them.

Yeah.

♪ Zubin Metha: Orchestral musicians loved her-- people who had never spoken to her, people sitting behind her just hearing her play.

I remember there was not an intermission at a rehearsal that they just wouldn't crowd around her.

I know that I played better than I've ever played in my life, because that was the sort of power that she had.

She made you a much greater person than you were.

She somehow saw the possibilities and encouraged them.

And the communication between her and me when we played was very, very powerful.

And it was always full of joy, as well, and passion and pathos and intensity and striving for beauty and striving for the most distant horizon.

♪ Yo-Yo Ma: In her quest for beauty, Jacqueline du Pré was able to unite two apparently contradictory qualities.

She could make a phrase her own, so it could not sound more convincing and yet so surprising to make us catch our breath at an unexpected shift in direction, dynamic, or tone color.

♪ Barenboim: She was unable to play one note of music mechanically.

She was unable to just sort of go, as often mentioned, on automatic pilot, and therefore music had a conversational aspect for her.

Metha: It came out in her musical collaboration also.

In other words, when she played music, she wasn't giving just of herself, but she was giving to her collaborator, whether it was Daniel on the piano, whether it was myself conducting, accompanying her, whether in a trio with Pinky.

She gave and took without even knowing about it in the most instinctive manner.

And this, of course, for chamber music, was unique.

I have never met somebody-- I hadn't met before, nor since-- who was such a musical conversationalist.

♪ Interviewer: What is the musical event that you remember most of your work with her?

Well, actually the "Trout."

But that was not only Jackie.

That was all five of us.

We joked through the rehearsals.

On the other hand, when the music was even being played at the rehearsal, it was very earnest and serious in the sense that we wanted to do well by it.

[Operatic singing, indistinct] ♪ [Indistinct] ♪ ♪ Itzhak Perlman, voice-over: The "Trout" is a wonderful little piece of history.

It captured a real musical time that I don't know if it exists anymore.

It certainly had an awful lot of people in it who worked well together.

And, of course, it shows her as the person that she was, you know, because that was the vintage.

I would say that was vintage Jackie.

♪ We were very, very innocent-- all of us, all five of us.

And we were very close friends, and so it was a very happy occasion.

♪ We are still friendly, we're still today.

Unfortunately, Jackie is no longer here.

However, she's still very much here.

She left us with something that I don't think if there's a handful-- and that's in sculpture with Michelangelo, it's with a Picasso, it's with a Jackie-- that changed society, changed our ways of thinking.

And there are very few people in a given 75 to 100 years that can do that or have that ability.

♪ [Piano music] And, of course, she ruined that piece for me, because every time I hear somebody play that piece, I say to myself, "It's not Jackie.

It's not Jackie."

I can't listen to that piece until, you know, when I hear a particular, uh, particular phrase... [Vocalizing] And I say, "Oh, God.

That's not her.

It sounds good, but it's not Jackie."

♪ Man: So the [indistinct] is long enough for you now.

[Airplane] Yo-Yo Ma: Alongside her husband and close friends, Jacqueline du Pré was a founding member of a classical "rat pack" that injected fresh vigor and glamor into an industry steeped in tradition and seemingly detached from the public.

[Playing "Rock-a-bye Baby"] ♪ My God.

He's sleeping.

[Laughter] Norman Lebrecht: In the early sixties, things changed, and a different kind of musician started coming onto the scene and buzzing with the scene, who clearly owed nothing to the atmosphere of deference.

They were enjoying what was the beginning of Swinging London, and something flips, and the world of music is never going to be the same again, because what was cast out of this was a sense of immense generational shift, as they were making their impact on the music scene and changing it.

♪ Newsreader: Youth, the swinging youths, who have given staid and sober old London its recent Swinging metaphor, and it's the voice of youth which is decreeing change in this city of increasing contrasts.

Not even the gay young things of the twenties could make such a shattering impression on our capital as this generation.

Swinging London.

But Jackie was, in a sense, the center of the classical music scene, because here was a person who was widely regarded as a genius, and there was tremendous enthusiasm for her and for her performances, and it was almost like a cult, but it had a knock-on effect on the whole of the rest of music in London.

Janet, come and sing the "Trout."

Janet Baker: "Trout"?

Come and sing the "Trout," Janet.

Oh, come on.

Now is the time to do it.

Janet?

Janet?

Come on.

[Janet Baker singing in German] ♪ ♪ Barenboim, voice-over: London was, in the sixties, the musical capital of the world because Germany was still closed to many Jews who didn't want to come to Germany.

Arthur Rubinstein and others, their orchestras were very good.

And we all created, I suppose, a certain atmosphere which was typical of London.

All right, Janet, come and do this part... [Janet continues singing in German] Jacqueline, voice-over: We were five friends linked by our youth and by the pleasure we had in making music together, and, suddenly, there was a statement of our happiness forever.

♪ When you're not actually giving concerts, you can forget the immediacy of the feeling, even though you still live every note totally.

But when I see the "Trout," it gives me back something of that feeling, which will always be so precious to me.

So here's to music really being the food of love.

♪ [Janet singing in German] ♪ [Applause] Yo-Yo Ma: This legendary ensemble for Schubert's "Trout Quintet" was the highlight of the 1969 Southbank Summer Music Festival, with Jacqueline du Pré at the peak of her prowess.

[Musicians cheer] Yo-Yo Ma: With the irony of hindsight, she would later look back to this happy time and recognize the early and elusive signs of the disease, which would soon end the career she loved so much.

Beare: When she started getting ill and she started getting very tired, I remember a couple of times saying to Jackie, "Shouldn't you be taking it a bit easier and not playing quite so many concerts?"

And she said, "Charles, the one thing "I really, really love to do is perform that I can't live without performing."

It's very difficult to divide the person from the performer because it's all so tangled up.

She adored playing in public.

It was the one thing she really lived for.

That's why that disease was even more cruel than it might have been for a lot of people.

Yo-Yo Ma: In the early 1970s, the onset of illness marked a period of anxiety and turmoil in du Pré's personal life.

[Typing] Unaware that multiple sclerosis was taking hold, she was suffering from fatigue, a variety of erratic symptoms and a notable decline in her playing.

[Typewriter bell rings] She had to withdraw from the concert platform for long periods under the guise of "nervous exhaustion."

Evelyn Barbirolli: She said she realized she probably had the disease a long time before it made itself manifest.

But on the occasion when it really did start and, she said, frightened her to death was in New York.

She was doing the Brahms double, and she realized, suddenly, and she put her fingers down and she was not playing what she'd fingered or anything, and she'd quite lost any kind of control.

When she was doing the four concerts with the New York Philharmonic, I had an appointment to go down and meet with them in their suite at the Plaza Hotel on the morning of the fourth concert.

Jacqueline was in the bedroom practicing a little bit, and Danny and I were having some discussions.

And Jacqueline came out of the bedroom and said, "I can't do this concert tonight.

I don't--I'm not-- I just don't feel anything."

In her hands and her fingers, it wasn't there.

I had just gone through an experience of a friend having multiple sclerosis.

So when she said that, I was incredibly disturbed.

So she went back in the bedroom and I said to Daniel, "You must have her tested for multiple sclerosis.

"There is no way this is psychological.

Please have her tested."

♪ Yo-Yo Ma: In February 1973, the third of four scheduled concerts in New York's Philharmonic Hall was her last public performance.

The official diagnosis of multiple sclerosis would come in October, and by the end of the following year, she would need a wheelchair to get around.

♪ Man: I think she found it extremely difficult.

She always laughed and smiled and joked, but I think underneath, there was quite a lot of fear-- fear of the unknown.

She so loved her music, and she was the cello.

They were one, she and her music.

It was just a continuation, and I think everything she wanted to express was there, and that's what was so dreadful, when that was taken from her.

And that's what makes her even more brave, that she came through for so many years.

♪ Itzhak Perlman: There's a lot of baggage that one carries dealing with an illness that really disables you in a physical way.

Her dealing with that was, in my opinion, more difficult than, shall we say, for somebody like myself, who had polio at the age of four, and as a child, you actually live in a particular way and you sort of grow into it.

With her, it was like physical freedom to being in jail.

♪ Jacqueline, voice-over: It does take a tremendous effort because I was very frightened by it.

It took me a long time to come to any kind of grips with what had happened.

But then I can say that in a sense, I'm lucky because the cello repertoire is small.

I have done most of what I loved, and I can look back on a full musical, soloistic life.

♪ She never complained.

This is a woman who did not sleep at night on her side and merely on her back, I think, for the last eight years of her life.

Never complained.

One of the great blessings for Jackie was to have Ruthanne, her friend, nurse, companion, whatever you call it.

She looked after Jackie like a sister.

Ruthann: She had made a decision that she will live with this.

And I looked at what she was able to do, and I did not help her beyond her abilities at that point in time.

She was not... she didn't just lie in bed and wait for it to happen.

She did what she could, and for me, that meant here was someone who was willing to move through this door in her life and take-- and still take the best out of life.

♪ This is an 11-year-old girl, a cellist.

And she says, "I'm learning grade eight.

"You inspire me to practice every day, and I hope one day to be as good as you."

Incredible the impact she had even on a child not born before she passed, really.

♪ She found a way through humor to live each day.

And, I mean, there were days when there was no humor, of course, not only when she was very unwell but just when she struggled with her disability and not being able to play.

And, of course, listening to her music with her was very important.

♪ Ruthann: There was something about her that made it possible for me to stay with her for 12 years and be happy.

I have not regretted one moment of being with her.

♪ Jacqueline: There are thousands of people who have this.

And it is a tough thing to come to terms with, but I've had wonderful help, many people.

So I think in that way, I was lucky.

Maybe one learns to appreciate even more the things that are still possible.

I mean, friendship has become very much more precious and less fleeting than it was when I was busy traveling around all the time.

♪ Ruthann: I remember her many times saying, "I have a husband who loves me.

I have friends who love me.

"I have you.

"What happens to those with multiple sclerosis "who do not have the kind of support I have?

How do they manage?"

And from that statement, she... started making phone calls.

Much to their amazement that Jacqueline du Pré was on the other end of the phone, was her desire was just to know that others were also achieving a quality in life that she had.

[Humming] I am just saying thanks for the life she gave me.

I face life differently because I've seen her face it with strength, seen her face it with passion, and that gives me strength.

♪ Leonard Selby: And everybody who visited her-- she had to have visitors twice a day-- lunch and dinner every day.

Everybody who passed through London from all over the world, be they musicians or artists or actors, always visited Jackie.

And everybody was treated exactly the same.

And I think there was a point at the very end when that wonderful eggshell around her just started to chip, and my beloved Smiley just started to crack at the seams a little bit.

And that was when we all felt more deeply than we ever had done.

However many friends you have-- and she did have many, many friends and admirers-- it must be so lonely trapped in that illness.

♪ Jacqueline: My days seem quite full, actually.

I like to make quite sure that they are full, because I don't want to sit here and mope that I can't do what I used to do.

But since the only thing I've really learned anything about has been playing the cello, I've tried to help others.

♪ It's very difficult when it's... it's like a bit of a cadenza.

Jacqueline, voice-over: I'm quite busy teaching now.

It's something I realized that I love very much.

[Vocalizing] To my surprise and gratification, I'm able to put into words what I try to say.

I thought previously that it would need my instrument to illustrate what I was trying to get over to the student, but I can do it in words, and this gives me great pleasure.

Jacqueline: I want you to do... Prryaam!

Do a great hit to the bottom G. Yes...

Try.

And if it's difficult, you could try that D on the C string.

She was a marvelous teacher, unexpectedly, because most great performers are not.

But I think in those masterclasses that she did, she showed that she cared about who she was listening to and was determined to help in any way she could.

Perhaps you could try it a little bit slower.

Yes.

I mean... [Vocalizing] And take all the time in the world you'd like.

You've been having to work quite hard on this concerto.

Take all the time you like.

Make it harmonic.

Use all your bow and so on.

Yo-Yo Ma: I've heard Jackie play only once live, but after she became ill, I met her twice for two cello lessons.

And what was remarkable was that even though she had not played the instrument for a number of years, she had absolute tactile memory of what the instrument felt like, so she could offer suggestions on bowings.

"Oh, can you try this bow?

It actually would sound better if you did that," or try a different fingering or play on a different string.

That memory was absolutely intact.

So it's... ♪ 1-4-4... ♪ ♪ 2, 2, 1 ♪ ♪ 2, 2, 1 ♪ Then the bow definitely can be moving first.

Yeah.

What, the same thing or 3 this time?

Yes, it will be time same thing... ♪ Katherine, Duchess of Kent: She's still an icon to musicians all over the world.

♪ And in her terrifyingly short lifetime, she did so much for the world of music.

♪ And she did so much for people who are disabled.

She gave people hope.

She taught people that you could live with disability, whether you were a musician or not.

She just made the world a better place, Jackie, in her short lifetime.

She taught us all so much.

♪ [Laughter] [Indistinct chatter] Hey, look.

Look.

[Laughter] Man: That's a memorable sight for my memoir... Beare: Now, I adored Jackie.

I mean, everybody did.

You won't find a person who was involved with her who didn't adore her, except possibly 1 or 2 conductors, who have probably passed on by now.

♪ She was definitely a huge influence on all sorts of people.

And a whole generation of great English cellists followed her.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason: Jacqueline du Pré would always have to be in a conversation of the greatest cellists of all time.

For me, she always has been my favorite.

Yes, she had a relatively short career, but a lot of people play and love the cello because of her, me included.

And that's a wonderful legacy to have.

Lebrecht: She had the ability to, as it were, create her own rubato in music and in life, and very, very few performers on any instrument have been able to do that.

One sensed she was so free that she transcended everything.

Yeah, she was a girl from a musical family.

She played the cello extremely well.

There've been an awful lot of girls like that, but there was only one Jackie, and you knew that from the moment she stood on the stage and she sat down with her cello.

There was a life force that burst through her.

[Laughing] [Indistinct] ♪ Barenboim, voice-over: You know, music is a complex affair because there is a lot of rationality.

You need to be able to think, to make structures, to know the laws for that.

You need a unique amount and quality of intuition.

Jacqueline could not explain theory or anything, but she had a sort of a direct line to the music.

All what one cannot really learn about music, she had 100 times more than all the other musicians I met in my life.

♪ Yo-Yo Ma: Jacqueline du Pré put heart and soul into every note.

She played with an incorruptible honesty, from earthy exuberance to the highest flights and the most moving depths of great music.

She touched our hearts in ways that cannot be forgotten, and left us with the impression that something remains forever between our world and the eternal.

♪ ♪