![]() He passionately believed music must serve a purpose. (Courtesy Lluís Claret)Ĭlaret said Casals was so much more than a musician. A young Lluís Claret, right, learning the cello with his godfather Pablo Casals. These days Claret still carries a faded photograph of himself with Casals in his cello case. In his teenage years, Claret started taking cello lessons with Casals’ brother, and even had the chance to play for Casals himself a couple of times. Their bond was deep, Claret said, and Casals became Claret's godfather.Īs a kid Claret listened to Casals’ compositions including, “El Cant Dels Ocells,” or “Song Of The Birds.” He said it felt as if the music was erupting from the earth. After the war they organized relief concerts together for kids who lost their parents. “He was hiding him in his house, and the Gestapo called my father and brought him to prison and he was going to be killed - and Casals saved him.”Ĭasals used his status as a celebrity cellist, composer and conductor to convince the Nazis to release Claret's father. “My father was caught by a Gestapo because he had a Jewish friend,” Claret recounted. Claret says Casals is the reason he’s alive today. There he became friends with Claret’s parents who were also Spanish refugees. He also toured the world performing.Īs the Spanish Civil War broke out, Casals protested Franco’s dictatorial rule and fled his beloved homeland for France. After years of relentless practice and performance, he created and funded a symphony orchestra and fought to bring affordable music to the masses. Decades later in the 1930s, he recorded them at London's famed Abbey Road Studios. “It was a difficult period for him,” Claret said, “because it was during the Spanish Civil War.”Ĭasals cherished his country he hated violence and conflict. When he was in his 20s, Casals became the first musician to perform the suites in public. Instead, Casals worked with copies that had annotation (or directions on how to play the notes) not attributed to the composer.īefore Casals, the cello suites were seen as complex, technical exercises - not for concerts. They weren't Bach's originals, because Claret says they don't exist. The young, determined musician spent years searching for the composer's intentions hidden inside the edited manuscripts. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)Ĭasals was born in the Catalonia region of Spain in 1876. When he was 12, Casals discovered Bach's Cello Suites in a music shop in Barcelona, Claret told me. Lluís Claret and Yeesun Kim have a laugh after playing Bach's Cello Suite No. He chairs the strings department at NEC.Ĭlaret, Kim and their students have been getting ready for an ambitious tribute this weekend, put together by Celebrity Series of Boston, that features multiple performances to celebrate Casals' legacy. "It's like our bible," says cellist Lluís Claret with a laugh. But Casals is credited with making the suites modern sensations in the 20th century and was the first to record them. His set of six unaccompanied suites from the 1700s are like a holy grail for aspiring musicians and virtuosos today, including Yo-Yo Ma. If you Google “most popular cello pieces,” Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suite No. It's a thought, it's not so much musical sound per se.” “It's really, literally, like someone reciting their concept about life philosophy. “Oftentimes when you listen to Casals playing, you don't really think that it's cello,” explained Kim, who is a member of the Borromeo String Quartet, which is in residence at the New England Conservatory (NEC). With her eyes closed, Kim’s fingers dart along her cello’s neck with a life of their own. She says it’s taken years to wrap her head around Casals’ long iconic interpretations. ![]() Musician Yeesun Kim wakes up every morning the way Pablo Casals did - by playing one of Bach’s six, demanding cello suites from memory. (Jesse Costa/WBUR) This article is more than 3 years old. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |