The holidays are not for the faint of heart. Pablo Casals, take me away!

On Casals’ birthday, I wish you some quiet time with his pioneering, rejuvenating traversal of the Bach cello suites, still sounding great after 84 years.

It’s hard to believe that these cornerstones of the cello repertoire were once commonly regarded as little more than etudes. The truth is, before the 20th century they were not widely known, much less understood. It is Casals who is credited with having rehabilitated them, following his discovery of the music in a Catalan bookshop at the age of 13. He cherished the suites for the rest of his life, not only playing them in public but delving into them privately every morning after a walk and a smoke. There must have been something to it: Casals died in 1973, two months shy of his 97th birthday.

He was the first cellist to record all six suites, already 60 by the time he first played Bach before a microphone.