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Pablo casals3/29/2023 ![]() I had a growing conviction that big occasions and big works were not the only important things in life.” The amount of waltzes, “Americaines”, mazurkas, “chotis” (schottisches), rigodons and lancers I played during these tours! But I took this playing very seriously. The heat, the travelling in old horse buses, the inns, the crowds, the dances which always lasted until dawn. “In the summer I joined some bands which took part in the festes majors of Catalonia. ![]() In Conversations with Casals, he recalled his youth: One of my favourites on this volume is the Popper Mazurka. ![]() It is hard to put into words how he captures the idiom he demonstrates here and elsewhere that dramatic recitative should be as much a part of the instrumentalist’s art as a singer’s.įor dazzling finger work, listen to the beguiling Popper Serenade. The Kol Nidrei is a work Casals recorded several times in his life: in 1915, 1923, and 1936. Listen to the Handel Largo from ‘Xerxes’ for its sustained line, dignified and unhurried. The slides are always for a particular expressive effect, judicious, never gratuitous. There is balance in the rubato, a controlled vibrato and a superb son filé. Casals knew the difference between sentimentality and sentiment, and he never indulges in personal distortion in these small gems. In Volume 1, composed mostly of pieces no longer than three or four minutes, we are reminded just how much depth of feeling is missing from modern playing. They reveal an artist with flawless intonation (this in the days of no splicing or digital editing!), superb clarity of articulation in bow and left hand, expressive slides and a way, as they say, with a song. These three Cd’s are well worth owning.Īt the age of 38, Casals did his first recordings for ‘American’ Columbia in New York in 1915. Some of his best performances are the acoustic recordings made from 1916-1925 (collected in Pablo Casals: The Complete Acoustic Recordings, Vols.1-3, Biddulph Recordings, LAB 141-3.) Even in their re-mastered condition, considerable surface noise is present, but if one has patience, there are riches to discover. Unfortunately Casals’ prime as an interpretive artist did not parallel the apogee of recording technology as we know it today. I shall aim to uncover what appears to my ears to be both clear and mysterious, the paradox of Nature and Art at work. Underneath there is rhyme and reason, but also an uncanny intuition at work. His interpretations are not capricious they observe fundamental laws of line and form, just as does every inspired work of art. The experience of listening to Casals reveals the essence of note, phrase, movement, and entire work just as in a grand building each detail adds to the majesty of the whole without interrupting the flow of line and structure. The choices that follow are entirely personal but will, I hope, invite the reader to explore this legacy and to make his or her own discoveries.įor help in defining proper art, James Joyce goes to Thomas Aquinas, who says that the aesthetic object renders three moments: integritas, “wholeness” consonantia, “harmony” and claritas, “radiance”. Casals was an incomparable artist, and we are fortunate that the invention of recorded sound coincided with his emergence on the world stage. I cannot remember when I have spent a more enjoyable few weeks listening to the skilfully re-mastered recordings, some from nearly a century ago, and marvelling at their freshness and immediacy. To revisit the recordings of Pablo Casals is an unalloyed pleasure, one that still yields fresh insights after many years of studying and playing the many of the same works that were his favourites. This is a unique synthesis of material and spiritual beauty.” Wilhelm Furtwängler “Those who have never heard Pablo Casals have no idea how a string instrument can sound.
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