Acclaimed British Cellist Jacqueline du Pre, Age 42

Jacqueline du Pre, the brilliant cellist who mastered the most difficult pieces in the cello repertoire but was unable to defeat the multiple sclerosis that cut short her illustrious career, died Monday.

Great Britain’s most acclaimed string player was 42 and had been forced to give up her two Stradivarius instruments in 1972 when the first signs of her illness became apparent.

She said a few years later that the successes of a worldwide concert schedule had prevented her from paying attention to the tingling hands, numb feet and blurred vision that are the initial signs of the sometimes-fatal disease.

Her former concert managers, who announced her death, said she died in her London home.

Miss du Pre’s devotion to the cello began when she was 4 after hearing the instrument being played over the family radio.

“I want the thing that makes that noise,” she told her parents.

She began to play in public when only 6 and, after completing formal training at the Guildhall School in London (where she won nearly every award offered), turned professional.

She staged a solo recital at London’s Wigmore Hall when only 16 and her selection of some of the most demanding cello works by Handel, Debussy, Brahms and Bach, brought her immediate and lasting acclaim.

She went from there to a BBC broadcast of the Elgar Concerto and within a few short months had become the toast of Europe. Her recordings of most of the extant works for her instrument resulted in demands for tours that brought her to American shores in 1965.

And it was at New York’s Lincoln Center where she was rehearsing Brahms’ Double Concerto under Leonard Bernstein when she discovered she couldn’t play the opening cadenza.

“It is very difficult at the best of times. I felt very ashamed. Everyone was extremely kind to me, thinking it must be nerves,” she told the Associated Press.

But she still didn’t realize what had happened and went on to the performance.

“I couldn’t think what the hell was happening,” she said. “I arrived at the hall and couldn’t feel my cello case or get the cello out of its case. . . . Walking on stage was like walking to the guillotine. Being unable to summon the strength in my arms and fingers, I didn’t know where they were or what they were doing.”

At first she thought she could someday perform again but doctors convinced her that she could not and she turned to teaching and to helping others with MS, which affects the nervous system.

Martin Bernheimer, The Times’ music critic who called her 1967 Los Angeles concerts “irresistible” and her technique “intelligent, warm-hearted fury,” remembered her Monday thusly:

“Jacqueline du Pre seemed to have everything: expressive flair, that obscure quality fans and press agents call charisma , a command of her instrument that produced tone of extraordinary poise and luster at one interpretive extreme, incredible richness and depth at the other. She could play with smiling radiance or with driving passion, sometimes with both at the same time. Her early retirement left an enormous gap in the world of music.”

Miss du Pre, who was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1976 and named Britain’s Musician of the Year in 1980, said she did not see herself as a tragic figure despite her adversity.

“I am a very lucky person,” she said a few years ago. “I have had a very rich, fulfilled life. I have loved the cello, and have had so much pleasure from it.

“At least, I have played the entire cello repertoire--there is nothing written for the cello I haven’t played. It has helped me very much that I had a big talent, because now it feeds me.”