This wonderful concert was the first of a pair given by Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra to raise funds for the MS Society in tribute to Barenboim’s first wife, Jacqueline du Pré, who died 30 years ago this month. The evening began with extracts from Christopher Nupen’s film Jacqueline du Pré: A Gift Beyond Words, a celebration of her talent and instinctive musicianship, recently shown on BBC Four. The programme opened, meanwhile, with Strauss’s Don Quixote – not the first work, perhaps, that comes to mind when du Pré is mentioned, though her recording (with Adrian Boult conducting) ranks among the greatest. But it was the big flights of fancy, as the Don dreams of love and holds his knightly vigils, that took one’s breath away with their passionate sincerity. Baleful clarinets at the start gave way to a real sense of turbulence as the first movement gathered momentum.

Source: The Guardian October 29, 2017 10:30 UTC