Jacqueline du Pre is master of the Elgar Cello Concerto

The argument

Jacqueline du Pre had a playing style that used body language in conjunction with music to convey the intricacies of any piece. The physical performance was not decoration added to the sound; it was part of how the interpretation reached the audience, which is why accounts of her playing so often describe what she looked like as well as what was heard. As Daniel Barenboim said, "she was carefree without being careless" — a description that captures the discipline underneath the abandon, since the freedom in her playing never came at the cost of the control the music required. Du Pre exuded an energy that engaged the audience and took the music to the next level. Her style of playing was unique and gave the music a completely different feel: the same notes in the same order arrived as something other than what other performers made of them. That style is why she stands above every other performer of the Elgar Cello Concerto. The fit is exact. The piece has an intense tone, and her movements embody it rather than illustrating it, drawing the audience into the work instead of leaving them to admire it from outside. A concerto that depends on the soloist's emotional commitment rewards a player whose whole manner of performing is commitment, and penalises one who is merely accurate. This is the basis of the larger claim. Du Pre is not just a master cellist but a master of art — she conveys emotion through her craft like no other, which is the standard by which musicians rather than technicians are judged. For this reason du Pre is the greatest cellist of all time.

Premises

Counter-arguments

There is absolutely no doubt that du Pre was a phenomenal cellist. However, her career lasted less than a decade. Due to this tragedy, it is incredibly hard to compare her career with that of other cellists. We cannot make any definitive claims as to her greatness, because we will never know what her career would have been. Therefore, we cannot dub her the greatest cellist of all time.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] A remark by a close collaborator is testimony rather than argument, and body language is a fact about how a performance looked. The premise gives no account of the playing itself — phrasing, tone, rhythm, the shaping of structure — which is where a case of this kind would have to be made. [Rejecting P2] "A feel no other cellist matched" is asserted and unfalsifiable as stated. Response to a performance varies between listeners and between eras, and no comparison is offered with the recordings the claim is implicitly ranked against, from Casals and Fournier to Rostropovich and Starker. [Rejecting P3] The final step does not reach the conclusion. Mastery of one concerto — however commanding, and that recording is widely regarded as a landmark — is a claim about a single work, while "greatest cellist of all time" ranges over repertoire, chamber playing, teaching and sustained achievement. The counter adds the difficulty the argument cannot resolve: a career ended by illness before she was thirty leaves most of that comparison permanently unavailable.