Jacqueline du Pré

Jacqueline du Pré, was born into a middle-class English family in Oxford on 26 January 1945. Hers was a musical household, and at the age of four the young Jackie was famously struck by the sound of a cello playing on the radio. She told her mother, ‘I want to make that sound'.

Cello and piano lessons followed with her mother Iris, a concert pianist and, by all accounts, an inspirational teacher who turned her children’s music lessons into a journey of play and discovery. She moved on to lessons with the celebrated cellist William Pleeth (whom she nicknamed her ‘cello-daddy’) at the age of 10.

At the age of 17 she astonished audiences and critics with her fiery performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, a work that has remained synonymous with her name ever since.