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.
© TiVo
-
The Complete HMV Recordings 1926-1955
Classical - Released by Warner Classics on 25 Aug 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: Cello Suites, BWV 1007 - 1012
Classical - Released by Warner Classics on 6 Mar 2001
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Ludwig van Beethoven: The Complete Works for Cello and Piano
Chamber Music - Released by Praga Digitals on 1 May 2017
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: Suites for Solo Cello, Bvw 1007-1012 (Live)
Classical - Released by Altair on 7 Jul 2021
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Bach by Pablo Casals: The 6 Cello Suites
Classical - Released by Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording on 16 Sep 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Pablo Casals - A Concert at the White House
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on 19 Feb 1962
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Chamber Music
Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thibaud, Pablo Casals
Chamber Music - Released by Warner Classics on 19 May 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
6 suites pour violoncelle seul
Concertos - Released by Naxos on 1 Jan 1998
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & Schumann (Diapason n°582)
Concertos - Released by Les Indispensables de Diapason on 28 Jul 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Pablo Casals: 'Song of the Birds' and Cello Encores
Classical - Released by Musical Concepts on 1 Jan 2005
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: Brandenburg Concerti Nos. 1 - 3 & Orchestral Suite No. 1
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on 1 Jan 1965
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Franz Schubert: Quintet in C Major Op. 163, D. 956 (Bonus Track Version)
Classical - Released by Scherzo Recordings on 5 Jul 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Trios No. 3 & No. 7 "Archduke"
Sándor Végh, Pablo Casals, Mieczysław Horszowski
Chamber Music - Released by Praga Digitals on 1 Jan 2018
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Pablo Casals: El Pessebre (2022 Remastered Version)
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on 22 Dec 2023
24-Bit 192.0 kHz - Stereo -
Franz Schubert: Quintet for Strings in C Major, D. 956 Op. Postumo 163 (Live)
Chamber Music - Released by RHI on 23 Aug 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Schubert: Trio No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 99 & String Quintet in C Major, D. 956
Pablo Casals, Eugene Istomin, Alexander Schneider
Classical - Released by Past Classics on 1 Dec 2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Les plus belles sardanes
La principal de Gerone, Pablo Casals, Enric Casals
Spain - Released by Marianne Mélodie on 1 Jan 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Les grands interprètes (Mono Version)
Pablo Casals, Nicolai Mednikoff
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1963
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Johann Sebastian Bach Cello Suites
Classical - Released by In Vinyl We Trust on 30 Sep 2022
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Trio No. 7, Op. 97 (Recorded 1928, Mono Version)
Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thibaud, Pablo Casals
Classical - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1957
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Pablo Casals: Song of the Birds (Cello Encores)
Classical - Released by Regis Records on 1 Jan 2004
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo