Dr. Peter V. Calabria

I can pinpoint the date now, as I dug up the review from the NY Times, which I will attach here. It was Jan.15, 1973. I drove a taxi for a short time after dropping out of graduate school in the 60s with one credit left to go on a PhD in Biophysics, as is outlined on our website, so I was not your usual New York City cab driver. I never mentioned this to her. But it sets the stage of how I felt when I picked her up at the Plaza Hotel. I hated driving a taxi because, while most people who are riders don't have a sense of the mind of the driver, I couldn't stand being the rickshaw servant of the riders, most of whom are quite less charming than she was.

I remember Du Pre fitting the cello into the back seat as she got in at the Plaza Hotel. I got out to help her, which made for more contact than is usually had between driver and passenger. The first sense of her was such that I never would have taken her for a famous performer. She was utterly natural, a bit shy, almost nervous, though I never thought that until now hearing that she had come down with her illness at that time.

The address she wanted to go to was over on the West side, I think on 89th or 90th Street, maybe, 169 - W. 90th St., over near Riverside Park. But, as I said, she gave it in reverse as 90-169. This soon gave us much to talk about, both of us stretching our necks to find out where she wanted to go as we travelled through Spanish Harlem and Black Harlem, almost up to Yonkers on the West Side, to get up to 169th Street . We sort of became friends trying to figure out and talk out just where it was she wanted to go in these very unlikely neighborhoods.

I spoke politics to her as that was my life’s interest. I was intense, as I say, at one point hitting the fiberglass that separated the driver from passenger to make some point. She had an intuitive sense of what I was talking about, I thought, a feeling for people on the lower end of the game, though demurring from extended analysis in telling me that she grew up on some island betwixt Britain and the continent, and that she had never been to regular school, her mother and tutors having taught her. She clearly expressed a sense of wishing she had had more contact with people growing up, but I was quick to tell her that she was better off not growing up under the control of school teachers in a regular school a la Just Another Brick in the Wall. Certainly that had to be case for her. I thought she was fortunate to have had that unusual schooling, though, again, there was a bit of sense of her openly regretted her narrow experience socially.

When I eventually dropped her off at the proper place, a couple of people were outside waiting for her as we were late. I was sufficiently taken with her towards the end of the ride that after she said she was playing at Lincoln Center that night, I asked her if I could get a pass to see her. At that, given my tone and with her quite recognizing that the primary reason I wanted to go was because of her and not because of her cello playing, as I was not a classical music buff (other than classic rock), she informed me that she was married to the conductor, Daniel Barenboim. At this I immediately lost interest in going to the concert and said, that's OK, both of us smiling slightly, if I remember correctly. The only other specific memory that comes to mind is that I shut the meter off after we got lost uptown and only charged her six bucks.

When I read the review, I feel fairly sure that her erratic performance was indeed at my suggestion that she improvise for I was a fairly forceful personality even back then and likely made as much of an impression on her as she made on me. You will note the difference in this “bad” review in New York on 01/15/73 and the good one in the Washington Post on your website for her performance in D.C. two days earlier.

In writing this, I shed a small tear even though I never knew her music. She was as exceptional as a pretty young girl in her twenties as the world thought of her as a musical talent. Rest in Peace.
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If you have a personal recollection of a concert or a meeting with Jacqueline, please let me know. Thank you.