Pablo Casals
As the first modern cello virtuoso, Pablo Casals created a new appreciation of the instrument and its repertory when the concert stage was still considered the exclusive playground of the piano and violin. Casals also devoted his formidable musical skills to composition and conducting, leaving many insightful readings of the standard orchestral repertory to posterity via recordings. He is remembered today as much for his pacifism and regard for human life as for his musicianship (he once stated that "the life of a single child is worth more to me than all my music").
Casals came to his true instrument relatively late in life, having first developed some degree of skill on the piano, violin, and organ. Discovery of the cello at the age of 11 led to studies (from 1887 on) with J. Garcia at the Barcelona Municipal Music School. After a period of supporting himself playing in local cafés, Casals was granted a royal scholarship to the Madrid Conservatory in 1893, where he worked with Tomás Bretón, and later in Brussels in 1895.
After a brief tenure as a cellist at the Folies-Marigny music hall in Paris, Casals returned to teach and perform in Barcelona, and joined the first of a series of notable chamber ensembles with which he would be associated: a piano trio with Belgian violinist Crickboom and well known pianist and composer Enrique Granados. In 1919 Casals founded the Orquestra Pau Casals in Barcelona. Although the project was quite successful, the outbreak of civil war in 1936 forced its dissolution. Casals, who spoke out vehemently against the Franco regime, was forced to seek refuge in the Catalan village of Prades. Following the Second World War, saddened by the lack of any definitive action against the Franco regime by major world powers, Casals elected to cease performing as an act of protest.
Inspired by the Bach bicentenary celebrations of 1950 at the first annual Prades Festival, Casals came out of retirement to begin a new series of recordings and concerts. In 1956 he made a new home in Puerto Rico, where he founded the Puerto Rico Festival. Though nearing 85, he began a campaign for peace in 1962, traveling around the world to conduct performances of his oratorio El pessebre (The Manger). Casals continued to make occasional concert appearances until virtually the end of his life in 1973.
Casals' impact on cello playing in the twentieth century cannot be overestimated. His radical approach to bow and finger technique produced a mechanical prowess far beyond any other cellist of the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. In addition, Casals was the first cellist to incorporate the kind of left-hand shifting techniques which had been employed for decades by violinists, thus allowing for far greater agility on the cello than had been previously thought possible. Always scornful of "flashy," superficial virtuosi, Casals strove tirelessly to develop and maintain the kind of intense musical concentration which he considered to be the true artist's responsibility.
Casals' virtues as a composer are less unimpeachable; very little of his music was published during his life. Works such as his Hymn to the United Nations (1971), on text by W.H. Auden, and, of course, El pessebre (composed 1943-1960) did receive numerous performances, but his works received little more than cursory notice by the musical establishment. However, the steadfast devotion which so defined his performing persona is evident in such works as the Revérie for cello and piano (1896), or the much later Sonata for violin and piano, which he worked on sporadically from about 1945 to 1972.
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Pau & Victoria: Historical Recordings
Victoria de los Angeles, Pablo Casals
Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released by Columna Música on Oct 30, 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: Cello Suites 1, 2, 3
Pop - Released by Slip N Slide Production on Oct 10, 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Pablo Casals: Beethoven - Piano Trio N° 7 Op. 97 - Piano Trio N° 4 Op. 11
Classical - Released by Classic Themes on Nov 10, 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Victor Recordings
Pablo Casals, Nicolai Mednikoff
Chamber Music - Released by Biddulph Recordings on Apr 27, 1990
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Pablo Casals, Volume 1 - Recordings 1945 - 1953
Classical - Released by Classical Moments on Jan 10, 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Collection of Beethoven Sonatas
Pablo Casals, Mieczysław Horszowski, Pierre Fournier, Artur Schnabel
Classical - Released by ArnebAudio on Nov 3, 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: Cello Suites 4, 5, 6
Pop - Released by Slip N Slide Production on Oct 10, 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Very Best of Pablo Casals
Pablo Casals, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonica Orchestra
Classical - Released by Past Classics on Nov 1, 2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Casals: The Complete Acoustic Recordings, Vol. 1
Pablo Casals, Charles Albert Baker
Classical - Released by Biddulph Recordings on Sep 16, 1997
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Cello Maestro, Vol. 2
Classical - Released by Académie on May 7, 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Alfred Cortot - Jacques Thibaud - Pablo Casals
Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thibaud, Pablo Casals
Classical - Released by JamadaDigital on Feb 5, 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Pau & Victoria Historical Recordings
Pablo Casals, Victoria de los Angeles
Classical - Released by Fundación Victoria de los Ángeles on Sep 11, 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 20, K. 466; Piano Concerto No. 22, K. 482
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Feb 21, 1995
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: El Archiduque & Sonata a Kreutzer
Pablo Casals, Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thibaud
Chamber Music - Released by DiscMedi S.A. on Nov 20, 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach : Cello Suites 1, 2, 3
Classical - Released by Apollo Recordings on Oct 28, 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
J. S. Bach Collection, Vol. 13
Classical - Released by ArnebAudio on Jan 3, 2024
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Complete Acoustic Recordings, Vol. 3
Pablo Casals, Romano Romani, Walter Golde, Edouard Gendron
Classical - Released by Biddulph Recordings on Sep 16, 1997
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: Brandenburg Concertos 1, 4 & 5
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Jan 1, 1965
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Brahms & Mendelssohn: Piano Trios
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Dec 7, 1994
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
J. S. Bach Collection, Vol. 12
Classical - Released by ArnebAudio on Jan 2, 2024
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
List of Compositions by Elgar
Pablo Casals, Sir Adrian Boult, The BBC Symphony Orchestra
Classical - Released by ArnebAudio on Feb 6, 2024
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo