In this story
The short answer
In 1965, twenty-year-old Jacqueline du Pré recorded Elgar's Cello Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by John Barbirolli. Barbirolli had played in the same orchestra as a cellist at the concerto's premiere in 1919. Having first taken part as an orchestral musician, he returned to the work forty-six years later as its conductor. The recording brought that experience together with the young soloist's playing.
Into the story
Too Little Rehearsal for a Premiere After the War
Elgar's Cello Concerto was first performed at Queen's Hall in London on 27 October 1919. Elgar himself conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, with Felix Salmond as soloist. He had written the work after the First World War. Remembering the lives the war had taken and the prewar life that could never be recovered offers one way to understand its elegiac character in relation to those experiences. An orchestra that had continued performing through the war presented a new concerto written in its aftermath, with the composer on the podium for the first performance.
The London Symphony had also suffered the effects of the war. Musicians had joined the armed forces, and the orchestra continued to perform under travel restrictions and the threat of air raids. Its new principal conductor, Albert Coates, agreed to work without a conducting fee to help the orchestra resume its concerts. The opening concert of the season, which introduced Elgar's new work, also included music by Borodin, Wagner and Scriabin. The orchestra had to prepare both familiar repertoire and a new concerto for a single programme.
Coates overran the time allotted to rehearse the other works, leaving Elgar and Salmond too little time to rehearse the concerto together. In her diary, Alice Elgar recorded both her anger at what her husband had endured and her appreciation of the musicians who stayed to rehearse further. The shortage of rehearsal was part of the background to the concerto's poor reception at its first performance. Even with the composer conducting and the soloist present, they had to perform without adequately bringing the new solo part and orchestral accompaniment together.
Elgar and the London Symphony continued working together afterwards. In January 1934, Elgar supervised an orchestral recording taking place in London while he lay ill in Worcester. A specially arranged link connected the two cities, allowing him to hear the recording from his bed. Instead of travelling to the studio, he listened to the playing from his room. The composer and orchestra, whose association reached back to the premiere, were still able to work on recordings while physically apart.
Barbirolli's Return, from Orchestral Cellist to Conductor
Barbirolli had played as an orchestral cellist at the concerto's first performance. In 1965, he conducted the same London Symphony Orchestra in du Pré's recording. The musician who had once played the cello part set before him now led both the soloist and the whole orchestra. When the concerto was first presented, Barbirolli had been one of the orchestra's cellists. Forty-six years later, he stood before the ensemble, setting the pulse and responding to the soloist as they prepared to record the same work.
Du Pré was born on 26 January 1945 and was twenty at the time of the 1965 recording. As a child, she had heard a cello on the radio and become interested in the instrument. She made her London recital debut in 1961 and began recording for EMI in 1962. Before recording the Elgar concerto, she had already gained experience in public performance and record-making. Her debut, her first EMI sessions and the concerto recording followed one another over several years.
The Elgar concerto was a work she had studied while learning from her teacher William Pleeth. In 1964, she began playing the Stradivarius cello known as the Davidoff. The following year, she performed the concerto with Barbirolli before recording it with the London Symphony. She played a score she had studied for years on a new instrument, developed a working rapport with the conductor in performance, and then made the recording. The celebrated 1965 album was preceded by a long process of learning the piece and playing it with others.
Musical Ideas Returning Across Four Movements
At the opening of the concerto, Elgar gives the solo cello four chords. The strings, clarinet and horn respond, and the violas introduce the theme. The order in which soloist and orchestra speak is clear from the outset. Departing from the concerto convention of a long orchestral introduction before the soloist enters, Elgar lets the cellist play first. Long before the slow movement heard in du Pré's recording, he begins the concerto by entrusting its first sound to the soloist.
The third movement, Adagio, is the slow section of the four-movement work. The cello introduction of the first movement and the swift motion of the second come before it, and the final movement follows. The four movements have different characters, while material introduced earlier returns in later movements. An excerpt of the third movement lets us hear its melody on its own. In the complete concerto, this slow music sits between the preceding fast movement and the finale. The first cello phrase also carries the direction Nobilmente, usually translated as 'nobly'. Alongside the notes, Elgar specified the character of that opening phrase through this instruction.
Near the end of the last movement, both the Adagio theme and the cello chords from the opening return. Instead of abandoning earlier material whenever a new movement begins, Elgar uses it again in the finale. A theme presented as a self-contained sequence in the third movement becomes part of the last, and the opening chords reappear before the conclusion. In an excerpt, we hear the melody within one movement; in the whole concerto, we hear how the same material recurs across the movements before and after it.
Performances Beyond the Recording
Du Pré stopped performing in 1973 and died in 1987. After illness prevented her from appearing on stage, her playing remained audible in the recordings she had already made. The 1965 Elgar album preceded her retirement. The early career that took her from her debut into the recording studio and her later health problems belonged to different periods of her life. The album's date places it in a time when she was still expanding her performing career, and the names of the conductor and orchestra who joined her remain part of its history.
Du Pré's performances of the Elgar concerto survive in concert recordings and film as well as studio albums. There is a 1963 concert recording conducted by Malcolm Sargent, a film of her performance with Barenboim from 1967, and a recording of a 1970 concert in Philadelphia. The Sargent performance preceded the Barbirolli album by two years; the filmed performance with Barenboim followed it by two years. Du Pré returned to the concerto repeatedly, changing conductors and concert venues.
This concerto was the last large-scale orchestral work Elgar completed. On 12 December 1968, du Pré also performed it with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. It was that orchestra's first performance of Elgar's Cello Concerto. A work completed late in Elgar's life became part of du Pré's own repertoire as she met conductors and orchestras in different countries. After the 1965 album, she continued playing it with other ensembles. The concerto remained part of her career both on record and in concert.
A Relationship That Began at a Scholarship Audition
Barbirolli and du Pré had also met during the Suggia Scholarship auditions in 1956. He helped the young du Pré tune her cello. The scholarship she received at eleven required her to practise for four hours every day. Nine years later, the two recorded the concerto together. The conductor who had tuned the young applicant's instrument led the 1965 recording, while the cellist whose scholarship had supported her studies played the solo part. Before they worked together in the recording studio, Barbirolli had listened to the young scholarship candidate and helped prepare her instrument.
In the 1965 recording, du Pré plays the cello chords from the very start of the concerto. After the orchestra responds, the four movements unfold, and the melody of the third movement and the opening chords return in the last. Barbirolli now conducted music he had played from within the orchestra at its premiere. The young du Pré took the solo part Salmond had played in 1919. Barbirolli replaced Elgar, who had conducted the premiere, and du Pré replaced Salmond as soloist. Together with Barbirolli, du Pré and the London Symphony recorded the four movements Elgar had left them.
Listening at Mahina
Mahina's lunch and dinner music includes the Adagio from Elgar's Cello Concerto, played by Jacqueline du Pré. When you hear this melody during a meal, you might also recall the story of the recording made by the young du Pré and Barbirolli, who had taken part in the work's premiere.
