Generations of the du Pré family have studied at the Academy, including Jacqueline’s sister and niece, but it was her mother Iris Greep who first came here. Iris was a talented pianist from a young age and, while still at school in Plymouth, travelled to the Academy to take her performers’ licentiate (LRAM) exam in 1934. In an article in The Strad, Hilary Finzi, Jacqueline du Pré’s sister (also an Academy alum), describes the hardships her grandmother Maud faced growing up in deprived circumstances, but how she strived to provide the opportunities for her daughter Iris to develop her musical talent:
‘Granny’s beginning in life [was] poverty, hunger and limited education. Yet I never heard her complain. A feisty woman, determined, quick and intuitive, practical, but so very warm-hearted, she remained devoted to all her family and gave her whole life to them… Maud was determined to give Iris more opportunities than she had had.’
Thanks to her mother’s determination, Iris was able pursue her ambitions as a musician and won a scholarship to study at the London School of Dalcroze Eurhythmics at the age of 18. While in London, she returned to the Academy one day and expressed her desires to study here to a porter at the entrance. She was taken upstairs by the porter to see the piano professor Eric Grant, who remembered Iris from her LRAM exam, and, after hearing her story, agreed to give her regular piano lessons.
Iris auditioned for the Academy after completing her Dalcroze course and won a scholarship, with Eric Grant appointed as her professor of piano and Theodore Holland as professor of composition. While at the Academy between 1934 and 1938, Iris won many piano and composition prizes. In 1945 she was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM). Looking back on her mother’s story, Hilary Finzi expresses the importance of her grandmother in bringing music into their family:
‘Without Granny’s personal generosity, Mum wouldn’t have taken her LRAM exam, where she met Mr Grant and Mr Holland. Without Granny’s albeit unhappy willingness to allow Mum to become a student in London, Mum would not have drifted into the [Academy] and chatted to the porter… I now realise that if Mum had not had her own selfless mother, the basis, strength and enabler of it all, the world would not have had Jackie.’
Iris stayed in touch with her Academy professor Theodore Holland after she had married and given birth to Jacqueline and her other children. This connection would lead to Theodore’s wife, Isména Holland, providing Jacqueline with her first Stradivari cello and subsequently her 1712 ‘Davidov’ Stradivari through the international violin dealer J&A Beare.
Along with her mother and relations who studied here, Jacqueline also had a close link to the Academy through alumnus and professor Sir John Barbirolli. Together in 1965 they recorded Elgar’s Cello Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra, which brought Jacqueline international recognition at the age of 20.
Today, the legacy of Jacqueline lives on through the Jacqueline du Pré Professor of Cello role at the Academy, which was awarded with the blessing of the du Pré family to Hannah Roberts in 2023. Hannah shared one of the same teachers as Jacqueline, William Pleeth, and has nurtured a significant number of today’s leading cellists, including Sheku Kanneh-Mason.