Pau Casals

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Pau Casals i Defilló ( Catalan form of name, [ ˈpaw kəˈzals ], internationally also known in Castilian form as Pablo Casals [ ˈpaβlo kaˈsals ]; * December 29, 1876 in El Vendrell , Spain ; † October 22, 1973 in San Juan de Puerto Rico ) became world famous primarily as a cellist , but also worked as a composer and conductor .

Life

His father Carles Casals i Ribes (1852-1908) was an organist in El Vendrell. He taught Pau singing , piano , organ and composition from an early age . His mother Pilar Defilló, a Catalan born in Puerto Rico , interpreted the 11-year-old Pau's deep enthusiasm for the cello right away. Against financial objections from her husband, she insisted on sending Pau to the music school ( Conservatori Municipal de Música de Barcelona ) in Barcelona to learn this instrument . In 1890, Pablo Casals was just 13 years old, he discovered sheet music by Johann Sebastian Bach “Six Sonatas ou Suites pour Violoncelle Seul” in a music store, or “Six Suites for Cello Solo”. These notes later made him famous. Through the efforts of his mother, he received a letter of recommendation from Isaac Albéniz , the famous pianist, to the influential Count Guillermo de Morphy, private secretary of Queen María Cristina , in Madrid. He set off on the journey with his mother and brothers. The count was so spontaneously convinced of his abilities that he was able to arrange an audition for the queen, who then granted him a scholarship to study composition with Tomás Bretón . In 1893 he began his studies at the Madrid Conservatory (Conservatorio de Musica y Declamacion), where he was taught chamber music by Jesus de Monasterio . Count de Morphy took care of Casals' intellectual and cultural training, which was still very sketchy.

In the summer of 1895 he agreed with the Count to change his studies to Brussels, where Casals was to study composition in addition to the cello. As a farewell, the queen gave him a cello. But the long journey was in vain: the composition teacher, Professor François-Auguste Gevaert , declined to accept new students at an advanced age, and the cello teacher Edouard Jacobs treated the unknown Spaniard so low-key that the self-confident Pau left without further ado and with her Decision also lost financial support from the Spanish court. On the way back, he stopped in Paris and tried to capitalize on his talent. However, he only found a job as second cellist in the theater orchestra of the Folies Marigny. He returned to Barcelona disappointed and began to build up an existence as a teacher - an activity that he would maintain throughout his life alongside his solo career and to which he would devote himself with great commitment and idealism. In December 1896, 61-year-old Camille Saint-Saëns personally accompanied him to a performance of his cello concerto in A minor . In a very short time he had become a national celebrity and he was appointed professor of cello at the Barcelona Conservatory. At the same time he was principal cellist in the orchestra of the Gran Teatre del Liceu . In 1897 he performed with the Madrid Symphony Orchestra and received the Order of Carlos III from the Queen. His career as a cello virtuoso was now assured. The royal favor of María Cristina opened Pau Casals the doors of other European royal houses, where mainly prestige could be acquired. In 1899 he played at the Crystal Palace in London, and then for Queen Victoria in her summer residence in Cowes , Isle of Wight.

Pau Casals

With a letter of recommendation from Count de Morphy to the renowned French conductor Charles Lamoureux , Casals appeared as a soloist with him on November 12th and December 17th, 1899 and was celebrated by the public and the press. Accompanied by the pianist Harold Bauer , he performed in Spain and Holland in 1900-01. In 1901 he visited the USA for the first time as an "assistant instrumental artist" on a tour of Emma Nevada. In March 1902, a life-threatening accident nearly ended his cellist career. During an ascent of Mount Tamalpais near San Francisco, a boulder came off and fell towards Pau. He couldn't get out of the way completely, and his left hand was shattered. Fortunately, the hand was restored, but Casals had to pause for a few months. In 1903 Casals traveled through South America, accompanied by Harold Bauer on piano and Bernardo Valentim Moreira de Sá, a Portuguese violinist, and his first solo tour of the United States followed at the beginning of the next year. On January 15, 1904, he played for President Theodore Roosevelt and his wife at the White House in Washington. On this tour he also met his future wife, the singer Susan Metcalfe. To house his growing collection of books, sheet music, paintings and furniture, he rented a house in Auteuil in south-west Paris in 1904, rue Molitor. The 325 francs per quarter rental costs were no problem for Casals, because he now earned an average of 500 francs for a concert alone.

His first trip to Russia in 1905 was a special experience - the revolution had already broken out. Casals, who actually wanted to go to Moscow, was only able to go as far as St. Petersburg because of a railroad strike. There he went to the conductor Aleksandr Siloti, whom he knew from correspondence. He was expecting the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe , who, however, got stuck in Warsaw because of the strike. So Siloti asked Casals to play instead of Ysaÿe. Casals gave several concerts, but conditions in the city were more than chaotic. Casals traveled to Russia every year until 1913. He worked with many Russian composers, e.g. B. with Alexander Konstantinowitsch Glasunow , Nikolai Andrejewitsch Rimski-Korsakow , Sergej Rachmaninow and Aleksander Scriabin , whose ideas fascinated him.

In the autumn of 1906 his father Carlos died. Casals was just taking part in a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion in Basel. After the concert, he immediately traveled home for the funeral. A little later, his mother gave him the idea of ​​building his own house in Spain. So in Sant Salvador, right on the beach of his childhood, a villa was built, which was later expanded again and again. In 1906 Guilhermina Suggia , a young cellist from Portugal, took lessons from Casals. They fell in love and she moved in with him in the Villa Molitor. His tours were getting shorter and he stayed closer to Paris - Suggia was also a reason for that.

In 1919 his career as a conductor began in Barcelona with the establishment of the "Orquesta Pau Casals", which was ended in 1936 by the Spanish Civil War.

In his autobiography, Pau Casals describes how his lifelong love for the cello came about at a concert in El Vendrell:

“The cellist was Josep García, a teacher at the music school in Barcelona [...] a beautiful man [...] His figure somehow matched his instrument. When I saw his cello, I was fascinated; I had never seen anything like it before. When the first note sounded, I was completely overwhelmed [...] I had never before heard such a beautiful note. Shine filled me. […] From that time on […] I was married to this instrument. For the rest of my life it should be my friend and partner. "

Casals undertook worldwide concert tours as a cello virtuoso and formed what is probably the most famous trio in music history with the pianist Alfred Cortot and the violinist Jacques Thibaud from 1906 to 1933 . He attracted particular attention with the interpretation of the suites for solo cello by Johann Sebastian Bach , which he presented in full to a musical world to which they were practically unknown until then. Although there were outstanding cellists like Julius Klengel even before Casals , his innumerable concerts with his virtuosity and artistic integrity aroused the interest of a broad public and raised the reputation of the cello as a solo instrument. At the end of 1936, after the beginning of the Spanish Civil War , Casals went into exile in Prades in the French part of the Pyrenees . After the Second World War , he founded the festival there in 1950 , today one of the oldest chamber music festivals in the world. Famous musicians such as David Oistrach , Yehudi Menuhin , Rudolf Serkin , Wilhelm Kempff and Mieczysław Horszowski made guest appearances in Prades for several weeks . Everyone came to make music with Casals. In 1956 Casals moved to Puerto Rico, where he started the annual festival. It became the most important festival in Latin America and drew such well-known names as B. Leonard Bernstein , Arthur Rubinstein , Mstislav Rostropóvich , Andrés Segovia , Jean-Pierre Rampal and Zubin Mehta to San Juan. In later years Casals handed the baton to the Polish composer and conductor Krzysztof Penderecki . In 1958 he helped found the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and in 1959 helped establish a conservatory.

Casals composed sacred music and orchestral works. His best-known composition is the oratorio El Pessebre ( The Nativity ) from 1960. In 1989 he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences .

At the age of 93, Casals still practiced the cello for four to five hours a day. When asked "Why?" He once replied: "I have the impression that I am making progress."

Political and social engagement

Pau Casals' statue in Barcelona
Pau Casals bust in Wolfenbüttel

Casals worked tirelessly for peace, democracy and freedom. Although he was called Pablo Casals in the Spanish media during the Franco regime , he always insisted on being called Pau ; not only because that was his Catalan name, the language he always advocated, but also because the word Pau in Catalan means peace .

When a communist regime was formed in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917 , Casals decided not to perform in that country any more. Known for his republican ideals, he performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Barcelona in 1931 on the occasion of the proclamation of the Second Republic in Spain . After Hitler came to power , whose goals he loathed, in 1933 he rejected an invitation to perform in Germany.

With the beginning of the Spanish Civil War , he publicly sided with the Republic. The course of the war forced him into exile in Prades in France at the end of 1936 . From there he actively supported Spanish refugees. After Franco's victory, he moved to Puerto Rico , where his mother was born to Catalan immigrants. He announced that he would not return to Spain until democracy was restored. In a further step in his struggle for peace and against the Franco dictatorship , he declared in 1945 that he would not appear publicly as long as the western democracies did not change their attitude towards the Franco government.

Between 1946 and 1950 he devoted himself to composition, study and teaching and continued to support Spanish refugees abroad. Only at the insistence of his friend Alexander Schneider did he appear again in public in 1950 on the occasion of the first festival in Prades. These were dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the death of his favorite composer Johann Sebastian Bach .

In 1958 he gave a concert in the Beethoven-Haus Bonn with works by Johann Sebastian Bach and sonatas for violoncello and piano by Ludwig van Beethoven , who for decades had avoided any concert appearance in Germany for political reasons . Before that, he had already visited the Beethoven-Haus while passing through in 1955 and had been honored with a concert by students from Bonn's Collegium musicum.

At the invitation of the United Nations , he performed a concert in the General Assembly on October 24, 1958, “United Nations Day”, which was broadcast to over 40 countries. This concert and his message of peace made Pau Casals a symbol of the struggle for peace and freedom in the world. In the same year he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1960 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Statue commemorating Pau Casals' 100th birthday in Montserrat

On the occasion of the world premiere of his oratorio El Pessebre on April 19, 1962 in San Francisco , he announced that he would devote the rest of his life to working for human dignity, brotherhood and peace.

In 1963 he was again a guest at the United Nations to perform El Pessebre . President John F. Kennedy subsequently awarded him the United States Medal of Freedom . In 1971, Secretary General U Thant honored him with the peace medal in the General Assembly of the United Nations . Pau Casals performed the United Nations anthem, which he composed on behalf of the UN . The piece of music then became known as the "Hymn to Peace". On the occasion of the ceremony, he gave his lecture in English and Catalan - at a time when the Catalan language was being followed in Spain. Afterwards he interpreted the old Catalan folk song Cant dels Ocells , which from this point on turned into a hymn to freedom. The news of the award of the peace medal to Pau Casals, a declared opponent of the Franco government, was published by only a few Spanish media, and most of them withheld the commitment to Catalonia in Casals' lecture and his interpretation of the Cant dels Ocells .

After his death on October 22, 1973, Pau Casals was buried in San Juan de Puerto Rico . On November 9, 1979, after democracy was restored in Spain, his body was transferred to his birthplace, El Vendrell. The Casals Museum is located in the house where he was born. In front of the concert hall named after him stands a bust of Casal, created by Josep Maria Subirachs . A bust of Casal by the artist Antoni Miró was also inaugurated in Germany in 1985. It is located in Wolfenbüttel , next to the Herzog August Library .

The private citizen Pau Casals

In Albert E. Kahn's biography Light and Shadow on a Long Way , which is after all a kind of autobiography, Casals did not mention his first great love, Guilhermina Suggia , at all . He seems to have completely pushed them out of his mind, even though they lived together for seven years.

Susan Metcalfe-Casals

Pau Casals as a young man, drawing by Ramon Casas ( MNAC )

The painful separation from Guilhermina Suggia, which began in 1912, brought his life up to now quite a mess. He had given up his house, his friends, and the way he worked when he drove to New York in the spring of 1914 in a depressed mood. Here he found consolation in Susan Metcalfe, a mezzo-soprano whom he had accompanied on the piano in 1904 and with whom he had had a brief passionate affair. Then they met again after a Casals concert in Berlin. To the amazement of his friends and relatives, he married Susan before the Justice of the Peace of New Rochelle, NY, on April 4, 1914. They lived in the United States during the First World War. Through them Casals gained access to the important social circles in New York. Pau and Susan gave concerts together in America, Europe, England, Mexico and Cuba. Casals accompanied his wife on the piano and was happy to give his cello a break, as he told his manager FC Coppicus. However, she did not like his many stays in Spain, and she did not get along very well with his family. Even so, they lived happily together for many years. In 1920 "Susie" traveled alone from his summer house in Sant Salvador in El Vendrell, Catalonia, to New York and plunged the Casals who stayed behind into a crisis. She came back the next spring and they were temporarily reconciled. Susan tried again and again to bind him more closely to America, but she failed. This ultimately led to the final break in their marriage in 1928. For Susan Metcalfe-Casals this even meant the end of a successful career.

Metcalfe stayed in France and lived in Paris. Her last known appearance was in 1951 at the École Normale de Musique de Paris , where Casals had also taught. At the beginning of the 1950s, Susan was found in a confused state in France and Casals was notified. He arranged for her to be hospitalized and then arranged for her to return to her family in New Jersey, where she lived with her sister until her death in 1959. On paper, they were married for over forty years, but only a third of that time had been together. He divorced her in 1957.

Franchisca Capdevila

One of Casals' first cello students was Franchisca "Frasquita" Capdevila. She later worked together with her brother Felipe in the administration of Orquestra Pau Casals, which was founded in 1919 . In 1930 she moved in with him as a member of his household.

On October 19, 1938, Pau Casals gave his last concert in Spain at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona for the benefit of Kindernothilfe. At the end of January 1939, after the occupation of Barcelona by General Franco's troops, Casals went into exile in France. At first he lived in Paris until he finally settled in Prades. Frasquita followed him into the Pyrenees. Their relationship was based on a combination of caring, dependence, and affection on both sides. She ran the house for him and looked after him without asking anything herself.

As she got older, she suffered increasingly from Parkinson's disease and was often depressed and confused. For her sake, Casals hardly left Prades. For twenty-five years, “Tití” - her nickname - was the closest thing to Casals. He married her on her deathbed as a symbol of his great gratitude for her loyalty. He didn't care that he was legally married to Susan Metcalfe. Franchisca Capdevilas died on January 18, 1955. Her funeral was the only reason for Casals to interrupt his exile and to travel to Franco's Spain with a special permit, where she was buried next to his mother in Vendrell.

Marta Angélica Montañez y Martinez

Marta was born in Puerto Rico in 1936. Her uncle Rafael Montañez taught her the basics of violin playing. He brought her to New York, and she attended the Marymount School of the Convent of the Sacred Heart of Mary . She also took cello lessons from Lieff Rosanoff at Mannes College of Music and made surprisingly fast progress. In 1951 her uncle took her to the Perpignan Festival and asked Casals to listen to her play. He said that he would take her as a student when Rosanoff thought the time was ripe.

In the spring of 1954 she graduated maxima cum laude from Marymount. She received an award for the best Latin student in New York State and a good rating as a cellist and singer. Now she traveled to Europe to see if the maestro who organized the festival in Prades would take her as a student now. He took her under his personal care, and in 1955 she was his favorite student. In December 1955, Casals traveled to Puerto Rico for the first time, accompanied by "Martita", as he called her. At the initiative of Abe Fortas and the governor Luis Muñoz Marín, Casals was also to hold a festival in San Juan. They came back in November 1956, this time with Casal's brother Enric (1892–1986) and his wife. They moved into a house on Calle Bucaré in the Santurce district of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Marta was a great help in organizing the festival. At the same time, Casals founded the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and a Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico , of which he was appointed President.

On April 16, 1957, Casals suffered a heart attack while rehearsing for the orchestra, and Martita cared for him devotedly. On August 3, 1957, Casals married the 20-year-old Marta Montañez in San Juan, which generally caused surprise and incomprehension - especially from Marta's family, who saw a career that had begun with hope destroyed as a result. They built a house on the hills near Ceiba, about 80 km from San Juan, and named it "El Pessebre". For Marta and Pau Casals it was a conscious decision made out of deep affection that enriched the life of the artist Casals for another sixteen years. Marta Casals is still the Vice-President of the Pau Casals Foundation, whose villa and garden in San Salvador, Catalonia, should serve as a symbol of hope because he believed that music can contribute to a better world.

Awards and honors

literature

  • Robert Baldock: Pablo Casals, The life of the legendary cello virtuoso. Kindler Verlag GmbH, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-463-40217-3 .
  • David Blum: Pablo Casals and the art of interpretation. 2nd Edition. Heinrichshofen's Verlag, Wilhelmshaven 2004, ISBN 3-7959-0284-3 .
  • Pablo Casals: Light and shadow on a long way. Memories, recorded by Albert E. Kahn, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1971, ISBN 3-596-12113-2 .
  • José Maria Corredor: Conversations with Casals. With a foreword by Thomas Mann . Alfred Scherz Verlag, Bern 1954 (French original title: Conversations avec Pablo Casals.)
  • Fritz Henle : Casals: a series of images. Edition Bergh, Unterägeri-Zug 1979, ISBN 3-88065-108-6 .
  • Michael Ladenburger: Pablo Casals in the Beethoven House in Bonn: his visits and concerts in 1955 and 1958. Text supplement to the CD, also in English and French. In: Pablo Casals in the Beethoven House in Bonn. Universal, Hamburg; Beethoven-Haus, Bonn 2001. P 1959, 2001. Order no. Philips 109 277-2.
  • Tilbert Dídac Stegmann: Pau Casals from the point of view of cello pedagogy (review by: Ralf Schnitzer: The development of cell cell pedagogy in the early 20th century. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-631-48708-8 ). In: Zeitschrift für Katalanistik 9 (1996), pp. 160–167 ( online ; PDF file; 784 kB).

Web links

Commons : Pau Casals  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Albert E. Kahn: Pablo Casals - light and shadow on a long way. P. 24
  2. Albert E. Kahn: Pablo Casals - light and shadow on a long way. P. 29
  3. ^ The Belgian cellist school
  4. Casals in Classic Today
  5. ^ The pianist Harold Bauer Broadcast: March 13, 1984 - "Historical recordings" on Deutschlandfunk, Cologne
  6. Emma Nevada website
  7. Bernardo Valentim Moreira de Sá
  8. Evan Bailyn: Pablo Casals Biography
  9. Albert E. Kahn: Pablo Casals - light and shadow on a long way. P. 28
  10. a b [René Puig (P. Casals' doctor in Prades since the end of 1936) in "Pablo Casals", "Conflent" magazine, 1965, p. 3]
  11. ^ "Festival Pau Casals" in Prades ( Memento from October 7, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ^ Festival Casals of Puerto Rico ( Memento from September 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
  13. "El Pessebre" performance in Acapulco, December 1960. Photo: Enric Casals, Marta Casal standing from left, Pau Casals and Joan Alavedra sitting with their wife; standing Narcís Costa
  14. Pablo Casals Museum - 101 Calle San Sebastián, San Juan
  15. ^ Michael Ladenburger: Pablo Casals in the Beethoven House in Bonn. 2001
  16. Soprano Weds cellist. New York Times Published: April 5, 1914
  17. TWO FAREWELL RECITALS .; Mischa Elman and Pablo and Susan Metcalfe Casals Appear. The New York Times April 9, 1916
  18. PABLO CASALS SCRAPBOOK (Page Twelve)
  19. ^ Susan Metcalf Casals. Painting by Lydia Field Emmet Date: ca.1925 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
  20. Susan Metcalfe-Casals sings "Le Secret" op.23 N.3 by Gabriel Fauré Gerald Moore, piano - recording London July 7, 1937
  21. Personal details : Pablo Casals . In: Der Spiegel . No. 6 , 1955, pp. 41 ( Online - Feb. 2, 1955 ).
  22. ^ Marta Istomin by George Sturm - Music Association of America
  23. ^ Festival Casals of Puerto Rico, founded in 1956 ( Memento of April 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
  24. ^ Marta Casals Istomin Founder and Vice-President of the Pau Casals Foundation
  25. ^ List of honorary members of the RPS 1900–1949
  26. Winner 1963 ( Memento from October 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive )