Jacqueline du Pré
Despite YouTube dickily filling movement breaks with ads for Dempster's Honey Wheat Bread and a 'Good Wife' spin-off, Christopher Luten's 1968 film of Beethoven's 'The Ghost' Piano Trio, Op. 71, No. 1, featuring Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman and Jacqueline du Pré, packs a double irony and a double sadness.
The first comes before the trio begins, with this story in yellow text: "In 1808 the composer and violinist Louis Spohr was invited to a rehearsal in Beethoven's house of the D Major Piano Trio Opus 70 No. 1 known as The Ghost, and wrote of the Occasion: "It was not an enjoyable experience. First of all the piano was dreadfully out of tune, which did not trouble Beethoven in the least, since he could not hear it. Little or nothing remained of the brilliant technique which had been so much admired. In loud passages the poor deaf man hammered away at the notes crashing through whole groups of them so that without the score one lost all sense of the melody. I was deeply moved by the tragedy of it all. Beethoven's almost continual melancholy was no longer a mystery to me."
The world's greatest composer struck by deafness is a story everyone knows. But this quote from Spohr really picks the scab off the legend and lets the raw awfulness show: he's rehearsing, but can't hear himself, the piano or the other musicians. He's alone with what he hears in his head, in "continual melancholy".
The second and even crueler giving-then-taking-away is in the person of Jacqueline du Pré. This film was shot May 12, 1970. She was at the peak of her career, her youth, her enormous gifts, power, and talent. But within a year of shooting it, in 1971, du Pré began to lose feeling in her fingers and other parts of her body. As she gradually lost sensation in her hands, she had to co-ordinate her fingering visually and her playing plummeted, publicly and painfully. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. By her final public performances in NYC in 1973, du Pré couldn't judge the weight of the bow and struggled to simply open her cello case.
She died at the age of 42.
For more bare-boned facts, here's the wikipedia article about du Pré:
The director of 'The Ghost', Christopher Luten, made several other films about her. This is a posthumus tribute. It's loving and leaves out anything ambiguous or grey in her character or work, but it's worth watching because, while it's brief, it's full of footage that gives a glimpse into her vast gift and the sheer joy she took in sharing it. It's inspiring. It's also a real kick in the pants to use the time that you have well.
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