Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(15 customer reviews) 26 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Passionate Jacqueline,
January 23, 2006 W. Buffam (West Chester PA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Elgar: Cello Concerto; "Enigma" Variations (Audio CD)
This is a wonderfully passionate recording of the concerto that has rightfully become as closely associated with Jacqueline Dupre as with the composer himself. I don't want to go into detail - just listen and drink it all in. I was lucky enough to hear Jacqueline play this piece live (in Manchester with the Halle in 1970), and this recording is every bit as moving.
But, truth be told, my main reason for buying the CD was the Enigma Variations. On reading the score I discovered an ad lib organ part that fortifies the texture of the orchestra for a substantial part of the final variation. The recording I had (Andre Previn with the Royal Philharmonic) ad libbed it out. I tried to research which recordings had the organ ad libbed in, but couldn't find any indication anywhere on the Web. But, I thought, I have a recording of Barenboim with the London Phil playing Elgar's Cockaigne, and he certainly uses an organ in that recording, therefore...... and thus I discovered this...Read more
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
A word about DuPre and the 'Elgar',
July 29, 2007 Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Elgar: Cello Concerto; "Enigma" Variations (Audio CD)
Why has one piece of music here, the Elgar Cello Concerto played by Jacqueline DuPre become so legendary?
Of course it is the music itself. It has an overpowerful haunting deeply hypnotic feeling. Elgar wrote it after his recovery from a serious illness towards the end of the First War, and his thoughts were certainly on the suffering of life, and the inevitability of death.
DuPre brings to the piece not only her great mastery as cellist, but some deeper element of feeling. There is in the playing a sense of romantic abandoment of wild disturbance , and of intense and even ferious concentration. She seems to be Orpheus- like overtaken by the music and it seems to be playing through her whole body. It is almost as if too in the playing there is a sense of the illness which will later come to her, and which ironically, paradoxically painfully will deprive her of the feeling in her fingers and hands.
She seems swept up by the music and yet all the while moving it to...Read more
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
I really feel it's inappropriate...,
June 29, 2007 Mr. Ian George Fraser "Nonsmokinjoe" (Brazil) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Elgar: Cello Concerto; "Enigma" Variations (Audio CD)
...for me to review this recording. These are for me at least two special works. The Elgar Cello Concerto has been described as "the final epitaph to the romantic movement" and I wouldn't disagree with that. Who could know that one of very young performers of this piece, Jacqueline du Pré, was herself to fall victim to a crippling disease not long after this recording? EVERYTHING about this recording is superb. It's hardly surprising that few today will dare to rerecord it. I don't want to say more.
The "Enigma" variations, as the name suggests. have remained a mystery ever since they were composed. The style is Brahms, no question, but the tone is well, mysteriously light. If has often been suggested, this sublime Theme and Variations is a portrait of Elgar's friends and lovers, then it is surely unique in music and will go on being listened to for ever. Wonderful performance, a perfect record.
