fevereiro 27, 2007
JACQUELINE DU PRÉ - 1955(1956?) GUILHERMINA SUGGIA AWARD
When Jackie was eight, her mother decided she needed a more advanced teacher and chose William Pleeth. Then thirty-eight, Pleeth taught at the Guildhall School and had been a child prodigy himself. With his powerful, deep voice and what Easton calls a "thoroughly un-English lack of inhibition", Bill Pleeth quickly became an important presence in Jackie's life. She called him "my Cello Daddy". Pleeth later explained that teaching Jackie was "like hitting a ball against a wall. The harder you hit it, the harder it would return. I could see the potential quite strongly on the first day. As the next few lessons went on, it just sort of unfolded itself like a flower, so that you knew that everything was possible."
In 1956 Pleeth recommended Jackie for the Suggia Gift, established by the great Portuguese cellist Guilhermina Suggia and one of music's most prestigious scholarships. That year's panel of judges was chaired by legendary conductor Sir John Barbirolli, who was very impressed by Pleeth's recommendation. On the day of her audition for the panel, he even helped Jackie tune her cello before taking a seat at the back of the hall. A few minutes into her recital, Sir John leaned over to another famous member of the committee, Lionel Tertis, and whispered, "This it! This is it!" One of the conditions of the Suggia was that the winner practise four hours a day. At age eleven, Jackie virtually left school and was cut off from normal school activities and relationships. This, says Easton, "put Jackie irrevocably out of sync with her peers and ended any semblance of a normal childhood."