Berlin 21-04-2010
PABLO CASALS - www.foto-face.com
‘Pau Casals i Defilló’ –better known throughout the world as ‘Pablo Casals’, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor born on the 29th December 1876 in Tarragona, Catalonia Spain.
Casals was initially taught by his stern father, a local parish organist and choirmaster who taught him in piano, song, violin, and organ – this he had in common with JS Bach.
When he was 4 he could already play the violin, piano and flute and at age 6 was giving a solo performances in public – this propensity for precociousness as the child prodigy he had in common with WA Mozart.
We are not completely sure when he had his first encounter with the cello but we do know that his father built him a crude home-made ‘cello’, using a gourd as a sounding box!
When Casals was 11, we do know for sure that he did hear a real cello which formed part of a performing group of traveling musicians – it was apparently love at first hearing – and it is said that from this point onwards to have decided to dedicate himself to completely to this instrument.
In 1888 he enrolled in the Escola Municipal de Música in Barcelona where he studied cello, theory, and piano.
At age 13, he discovered in a 2nd hand shop some old music scores of Bach’s six suites for solo Cello. In the typical assiduous and professional style that would mark his further career, Casals spent the next thirteen years practising the score every day before daring to perform them in public for the first time.
He made prodigious progress as a cellist; on February 23, 1891 he gave a solo recital in Barcelona at the age of fourteen. He graduated from the Escola with honours five years later.
In 1893, another Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz heard him playing in a trio in a café and gave him a letter of introduction to the private secretary to María Cristina, the Queen Regent. Casals was asked to play at informal concerts in the palace, and was granted a royal stipend to study composition at the Conservatorio de Música y Declamación in Madrid with Víctor Mirecki. He also played in the newly organized Quartet Society.
In 1895 he went to Paris, where, having lost his stipend from Catalonia, he earned a living by playing second cello in the theater orchestra of the Folies Marigny. In 1896, he returned to Catalonia and received an appointment to the faculty of the Escola Municipal de Música in Barcelona. He was also appointed principal cellist in the orchestra of Barcelona’s opera house, the Liceu. In 1897 he appeared as soloist with the Madrid Symphony Orchestra, and was awarded the Order of Carlos III from the Queen. Who said royalty never did anything useful in the 19th century!!
In 1899, Casals played at The Crystal Palace in London, and later for Queen Victoria at Osborne House, her summer residence, accompanied by Ernest Walker. On November 12 and December 17, 1899, he appeared as a soloist at Lamoureux Concerts in Paris, to great public and critical acclaim. He toured Spain and the Netherlands with the pianist Harold Bauer in 1900-1901; in 1901-1902 he made his first tour of the United States; and in 1903 toured South America.
On January 15, 1904, Casals was invited to play at the White House for President Theodore Roosevelt. On March 9 of that year he made his debut at Carnegie Hall in New York, playing Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote under the baton of the composer.
In 1914 Casals married the American socialite and singer Susan Metcalfe; they were separated in 1928, but did not divorce until 1957.
Back in Paris, Casals organized a trio with the pianist Alfred Cortot and the violinist Jacques Thibaud; they played concerts and made recordings until 1937. Casals also became interested in conducting, and in 1919 he organized, in Barcelona, the Orquesta Pau Casals and led its first concert on October 13, 1920. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the Orquesta Pau Casals ceased its activities.
Casals made many recordings during his long career, of solo, chamber, and orchestral music, but musically Casals will most likely be remembered most for his revival of the ‘Bach Suites for solo Cello ’ which he recorded from 1936 to 1939 and almost for ‘legitimizing’ generally the medium of cello-solo for the concert repertoire.
Casals was an ardent supporter of the Spanish Republican government and after the rise of the weakling coward Franco – with active support from Hitler and Mussolini, and silent acquiescence from most European governments with the exception of the left-wing government of France under Leon Blum and the then Soviet Union – in 1939, Casals vowed never to return to Spain until democracy had been restored and this he never did in his lifetime.
He settled in a French village near the Spanish frontier; between 1939 and 1942 he made sporadic appearances as a cellist in the unoccupied zone of southern France and in Switzerland.
So fierce was his opposition to the usurper-coward Franco that he even refused to appear in countries that recognized the fascist Spanish regime. One notable exception he did make in 1961 when he played at a special concert of chamber music in the White House at the personal request of President Kennedy, whom he admired. The admiration was mutual and in 1963, Casals was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Throughout most of his professional career, he played on a cello that was created by the Venetian luthier, Matteo Goffriller around 1700. It was acquired by Casals in 1913… He also played another cello by Goffriller dated 1710, and a Tononi of 1730.
[Some Biographical information copied directly from English Wikipedia]
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As a continuation of our’ OTA-Berlin Constituency Blog Mini-Composer-Biography Series’ we present the fourth of the Spanish Composers for the new OTA-Berlin serviced apartments building opening in beginning of May 2010 at Metzer Strasse 8 in Berlin Mitte.
