Jacqueline du Pré: Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto No. 1/Delius: Cello Concerto [PARLOPHONE]

Why you'll love it

This pressing uses a 2022 remaster made in 192kHz/24-bit from the original tapes. Du Pré is widely regarded as one of the great cellists of the 20th century, and the Delius, with Sir Malcolm Sargent and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, dates from 1965.

This edition

• Remastered in 192kHz/24-bit from the original tapes
• Pressed in Germany
• Stereo mix

About the album

At four, the story goes, Jacqueline du Pré heard a cello on the radio and asked her mother for one of those. By 16 she had made her debut at Wigmore Hall, and by 20 she was playing with leading orchestras around the world, a young Englishwoman with a big, warm, singing sound.

The two concertos here show both sides of her. Saint-Saëns' Concerto No. 1 is compact and dramatic, three linked movements played as one sweep, and du Pré attacks it with fire. Born in Oxford and trained at the Guildhall School of Music, she brought the same intensity to everything she recorded. Delius' Cello Concerto is the opposite, a long, rhapsodic, pastoral reverie, and she lets it bloom slowly, with Sir Malcolm Sargent and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in gentle support.

She studied with William Pleeth, Paul Tortelier, Pablo Casals and Mstislav Rostropovich, which is as good a set of references as a cellist could hope for. A lovely pair to file next to her famous Elgar.

Also at Kops: more Jacqueline du Pré on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Parlophone.