Creativity Quote by Jacqueline du Pre

Du Pre is describing virtuosity without the vanity: that rare moment when the self stops narrating and starts listening. She links two kinds of “rightness” that are usually treated as separate experiences - nature’s effortless beauty and the hard-won alignment of a performance that finally locks in. The line is disarmingly plain, which is part of its force. A famous musician could have reached for mysticism or grandeur; instead she offers a bodily, almost childlike equivalence: walking, seeing, playing, feeling.

The specific intent is to normalize musical transcendence as something grounded in perception rather than ego. “Very beautiful place” implies an external order you didn’t manufacture. “Play and it goes right” hints at the opposite: a human-made act, practiced to the point of obsession, that still depends on factors you can’t fully command - acoustics, ensemble chemistry, nerves, the day’s emotional weather. By putting them on the same shelf, she suggests that the best performance feels less like conquest than like entering a landscape that was already there.

The subtext is also about relief. Du Pre’s career mythology - the stunning early bloom, the public adoration, the abrupt interruption by illness - makes “when it goes right” sound fragile, almost precarious. She’s not talking about perfection; she’s talking about the fleeting click of belonging, when technique disappears and you’re simply inside the thing.

Contextually, it’s a musician’s quiet argument against romantic suffering as the source of art. The peak isn’t pain; it’s clarity. The payoff is not applause, but the same calm shock you get when beauty in the world makes you stop walking for a second.