Delius's Cello Concerto, dictated by the blind, paralyzed composer in 1921, drifts through suspended harmonies without resolution—a late work of valedictory beauty. Jacqueline du Pré's 1967 recording with Malcolm Sargent captures something beyond technique: at twenty-two, she inhabits the piece with decades of gravitas, her phrasing creating inevitability within Delius's amber-lit harmonic landscape. Essential for those seeking string performance as profound utterance.
⚡ Quick Answer: Jacqueline du Pré's 1967 recording of Delius's Cello Concerto captures something transcendent—a twenty-two-year-old cellist performing with the maturity of decades, her phrasing creating inevitability rather than willfulness. Recorded with conductor Malcolm Sargent months before his death, this performance documents not mere technical mastery but something closer to a confession, her cello breathing with singular weight and movement through the composer's late, drifting harmonic landscape.
There are recordings that document a performance, and then there are recordings that document something closer to a confession — and this is the second kind.
Jacqueline du Pré was twenty-two years old when she walked into the sessions for this record in 1967, and she already played the Delius Cello Concerto like someone who had been carrying it for decades. The piece itself is peculiar: late Delius, composed in 1921 when the composer was already blind and largely paralyzed, dictating notes to his amanuensis Eric Fenby. It doesn’t develop so much as drift, suspended in a kind of amber light, all long valedictory lines and harmonies that don’t quite resolve into anything you can name. Most cellists treat it gently, as a curiosity. Du Pré treated it like the only piece that mattered.
The Sessions
The recording was made with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Malcolm Sargent, one of the last major projects Sargent would complete before his death that same autumn. There’s something fitting about that — two people both, in different ways, near the end of something, making music about a composer who was himself composing from the end. The EMI engineers captured du Pré’s sound with a directness that still stops me. That lower register, the way she found weight without ever sacrificing movement. She makes the cello sound like it’s breathing.
The coupling on this original release was the Elgar Cello Concerto — also du Pré, also 1967, also EMI, that time with Barbirolli and the London Symphony. The Elgar is the one everyone knows, the one that gets talked about in hushed tones at music colleges. Rightly so. But I’d ask you to stay with the Delius tonight.
What She Does with the Slow Movement
The second movement here — marked Lento e comodo — is about four and a half minutes long, and du Pré does something with the phrasing that I have never fully been able to explain. She holds back in places where any rational reading of the score would push forward, and then she moves through passages that seem to ask for breadth, and somehow the cumulative effect is not willfulness but inevitability. It sounds like a decision being made in real time. It sounds like memory.
She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1973 and gave her last public performance the same year, at thirty-one. By then this recording was already six years old, but it doesn’t feel like history — it feels like something still happening. That is the trick of the best live-studio recordings: they collapse time.
Malcolm Sargent died in October 1967, just months after these sessions. Du Pré’s own story continued for another twenty years, most of it spent unable to play. She died in 1987. The music she left behind is a small and specific body of work, and this is one of the stranger, quieter corners of it. Which is maybe why I keep coming back here, after the kid is in bed and the house is quiet enough to hear what’s actually going on.
Delius wrote a lot of music about transience — On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, A Song Before Sunrise, In a Summer Garden. He was obsessed with the moment just before something ends. He found the right cellist, even if he never knew it.
Further Reading
- What to Listen for in Classical Music (And Actually Hear It)
- Best Sounding Classical Recordings on Vinyl Worth Owning
- The Best Late Night Listening Albums for Your Turntable
More from Jacqueline Du Pré
🎵 Key Takeaways
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Why is Jacqueline du Pré's 1967 Delius recording considered exceptional when she was only 22?
Du Pré's interpretation achieves a kind of maturity and inevitability that transcends technical display; her phrasing choices—holding back where the score suggests momentum, moving through seemingly broad passages with purpose—create an effect of lived understanding rather than youthful virtuosity. The recording captures something closer to a confession than a performance document.
What makes Delius's Cello Concerto unusual as a composition?
Written in 1921 when Delius was blind and paralyzed (dictated to amanuensis Eric Fenby), the piece drifts through suspended harmonies rather than developing conventionally, evoking transience and the moment before something ends. Most cellists treat it as a period curiosity, but du Pré approached it with singular intensity.
What's historically significant about the recording sessions themselves?
Malcolm Sargent conducted the Royal Philharmonic for what became one of his final major projects; he died just months later that same autumn of 1967. There's a thematic symmetry in two figures—a young cellist and an aging conductor—making music by a composer obsessed with endings.
How does du Pré's phrasing in the slow movement achieve its effect?
In the Lento e comodo, she deliberately holds back in moments where rational interpretation would push forward, then moves decisively through passages that invite breadth—creating a cumulative sense of inevitability rather than willfulness, as if a significant decision were being made in real time.
What happened to du Pré after this recording?
She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1973 and gave her final public performance that same year at age 31; she spent the remaining 14 years of her life unable to play, dying in 1987. This 1967 recording represents a small but essential corner of her documented legacy.
Further Reading
- What to Listen for in Classical Music (And Actually Hear It)
- Best Sounding Classical Recordings on Vinyl Worth Owning
- The Best Late Night Listening Albums for Your Turntable
More from Jacqueline Du Pré
Further Reading
- What to Listen for in Classical Music (And Actually Hear It)
- Best Sounding Classical Recordings on Vinyl Worth Owning
- The Best Late Night Listening Albums for Your Turntable
More from Jacqueline Du Pré
Further Reading
More from Jacqueline Du Pré