He put his career on hold to stand up to Franco. He rediscovered the Bach cello suites. He played for Queen Victoria and John F. Kennedy. He founded the Prades Festival. He established the Puerto Rico Symphony and Conservatory. He gave master classes, conducted and recorded at Marlboro. He was even a talented composer.
Pablo Casals was a giant of an artist and of a man. Is it any wonder so many of his colleagues were moved to write music for him?
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear works dedicated to Casals by three of his composer friends and colleagues.
Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote his seldom-heard “Fantasia on Sussex Folk Tunes” around the time he was at work on his Piano Concerto and “Job: A Masque for Dancing.” Casals performed the piece in 1930. It was not heard again until 1983, the year of its world-premiere recording (featuring Julian Lloyd Webber). The composer later undertook a full-scale concerto for Casals. It was never completed, but the sketches for its slow movement were realized for a 2010 performance at the BBC Proms, under the title “Dark Pastoral.”
Donald Francis Tovey, who would achieve fame as a musicologist, composed quite a lot of music himself, most of it now forgotten. In 1935, he wrote a concerto for Casals. At nearly an hour in length, the work may be the longest cello concerto ever written.
In 1912, Tovey was a houseguest of Casals and cellist Guilhermina Suggia, at their summer home at Playa San Salvador on the Mediterranean coast. There, he played tennis, swam, and performed chamber music with the likes of Enrique Granados and Mieczyslaw Horszowski. He also made great strides on his opera, “The Bride of Dionysus.” As a show of thanks, he composed for his hosts a Sonata for Two Cellos in G major, which became part of the evenings’ entertainments. The work’s second movement is a set of variations on a Catalan folk song. We’ll hear it performed by Marcy Rosen and Frances Rowell, from a Bridge Records, Inc. release.
Finally, Arnold Schoenberg, himself an amateur cellist, had done editorial work on three pieces by the 18th century composer Georg Matthias Monn, for inclusion in the publication “Monuments of Music in Austria.” When Casals invited Schoenberg to conduct his orchestra in Barcelona, the composer set about arranging a “new” concerto, based upon a harpsichord work by Monn, written in 1746. We’ll hear Schoenberg’s transformation of the piece performed by Yo-Yo Ma.
Pau takes a bow! I hope you’ll join me for “Casals’ Pals” – music written for Pablo Casals by notable composer friends and colleagues – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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