The Complete Emi Recordings [AUDIO-CD]

The Complete Emi Recordings AUDIO-CD Description

Pau Casals i Defilloor Pablo Casals as we was known throughout his glittering career was born on 29th December 1876 in El Vendrell in the Catalan part of Spain where his father was a parish choirmaster and organist. He taught Pablo singing, piano, violin, organ and how to compose. At six he heard a travelling musician playing a home-made cello and his father made him one. On hearing his first proper cello when he was eleven made him decide that this would be his instrument.In 1888 he enrolled in the Municipal School of Music in Barcelona to study musical theory as well as piano and cello. Such was his remarkable progress that he gave a solo recital at the age of fourteen and graduated with honours two years later.

Albeniz, the great Spanish composer, heard him in a cafe trio and gave him a letter of introduction to the private secretary to Maria Cristina, the Queen Regent, in Madrid. He was duly granted a royal stipend to study composition at the Capitals Music Conservatory and played at informal concerts in the palace. In 1895 he spent a year in Paris earning his living by playing second cello in the theatre orchestra of the Folies Marigny. He returned to Catalonia the following year and taught at the Music School.
In 1897 he appeared as soloist playing the Lalo Concerto with the Madrid Symphony Orchestra and the Queen awarded him the Order of Carlos III.

In 1899 he played at Londons Crystal Palace and for Queen Victoria at her summer residence, in November and December that year he was soloist at prestigious Lamoureux concerts in Paris to great public and critical acclaim. With the pianist Harold Bauer he toured Spain and the Netherlands in 1900/1, the United States in 1901/2 and South America in 1903. On 15th January 1904 he played at the White House for President Theodore Roosevelt and on 9th March he made his Carnegie Hall debut, playing Richard Strauss: Don Quixote under the baton of the composer.In 1905 he moved to Paris where with the pianist Alfred Cortot and violinist Jacques Thibaud he established the famous trio which would last until 1934. The trio recorded Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann in versions which, even today, are regarded as touchstones of greatness. He also recorded cello sonatas by Beethoven and Brahms as well as the cello concertos by Dvork and Elgar together with Bruchs Kol Nidrei. Arguably his greatest recording was made by himself alone: In three periods during the years 1936, 1938 and 1939 he committed to disc the six suites by Bach.

Besides being a master of the cello he was a conductor and created an orchestra in his native Catalonia Orquesta Pau Casals, Barcelona indeed Cortot conducted it when Thibaud and Casals were the soloists in the recording of the Brahms Concerto for Violin and Cello and orchestra.He was also a composer and amongst his creations are works for chorus as well as for his instrument the most famous being an arrangement of the Catalan folksong El cant dels ocells (Song of the Birds)

For such a great man who gave so much music to the world, alas, his life was blighted by cruel fate. In 1936 Civil War broke out in Spain and his orchestra ceased its activities. He settled in a village in France close to the border with Spain where he gave concerts to assist those who opposed the fascist junta. So fierce was his anger at Francisco Francos dictatorial regime that he refused to appear in countries that recognised it as the legitimate government, an embargo that he only broke once when he played at the White House in November 1961 at the invitation of President John F. Kennedy whom he admired.

Celebrations to mark the bicentenary of the death of Bach in Prades in Conflent (about 20 miles west of Perpignan) prompted him to resume his career as both cellist and conductor and he continued to lead these festivals until 1966. By this time he had been living in the country of his mothers birth, Puerto Rico for 10 years and married for nine of those to a local student, Marta Montaez Martinez. Casals had been married once before; from 1906 and 1912 he was associated with Guilhermina Suggia, a talented young Portuguese cellist but, although she often referred to herself in concert programmes as Mme P. Casals, they never married. In 1914 he married the American singer Susan Metcalfe; they separated fourteen years later but did not divorce until 1957 when he married for the second time. Casals and his wife set up home in a house called El Pesebre in the town of Ceiba on the east coast of the island whilst the capital, San Juan, inaugurated the annual Casals Festival in the same year.

During the 1960s Casals gave many master classes throughout the world. His last major public engagement was to conduct one of his last works: Himne a les Nacions Unides (Hymn of the United Nations) on 24th October 1971, two months before his 95th birthday. He died in 1973 but in 1979 his remains were returned for burial at his birthplace in Catalonia having failed by two years to see the end of Franco and the return of democratic rule for which he had fought so hard. He was posthumously honoured by the new government with the issue of a commemorative postage stamp in honour of the centenary of his birth in 1976.

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