Pablo Casals Biography - life, children, parents, death, school, mother, information, born, house Pablo Casals Biography San Juan, Puerto Rico Spanish composer, cellist, and conductor Pablo Casals was regarded as one of the greatest cello players and composers (writers of music) of the twentieth century. He was also an active protester against oppressive governments (those that misuse their power and mistreat citizens), including that of the Spanish tyrant Francisco Franco (1892–1975). Early life Pablo Casals was born on December 29, 1876, in Vendrell, in the Catalonian region of Spain. He was the second of eleven children of Carlos Casals and Pilar Defillo de Casals. Casals's father, the local church organist, would play the piano while the infant Casals rested his head against it and sang along. By the age of four Casals was playing the piano, and at five he joined the church choir. At six he was composing songs with his father, and by the age of nine he could play the violin and organ. From the age of ten Casals began each day with a walk, taking inspiration from nature.

He would then play two Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) pieces on the piano when he returned home. Masters the cello Casals became interested in the cello after seeing the instrument in a music recital at age eleven; soon, his father built him one. His parents argued about his future; his father wanted him to study carpentry, but his mother would not hear of it and enrolled him in the Municipal School of Music in Barcelona, Spain. Casals clashed with his strict instructors, preferring to play the cello in his own, more expressive, manner. His progress was extraordinary, and Casals's new way of playing made the cello a more popular instrument. Among those impressed by Casals was the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909). After hearing Casals play, Albéniz gave him a letter of introduction to Count Guillermo de Morphy, secretary to the Queen Regent of Spain, Maria Cristine. In 1894 Casals traveled to Madrid, Spain, and gave concerts for the queen and her court. Over the next few years his reputation spread as he played with various orchestras in Madrid.

With his formal debut as a concert soloist in Paris, France, in 1899, Casals's career was assured. New respect for Bach's music Sometime in 1890, while Casals and his father were in a Barcelona bookstore, he found a volume of Bach's six suites (arrangements of music) for solo cello. Previously the suites were considered merely musical exercises, but Casals saw in them something deeper. He studied and practiced the suites every day for a dozen years before performing Pablo Casals. AP/Wide World Photos . them publicly; he continued to play at least one suite every day for the rest of his life. Casals's performance of the suites shocked listeners by correcting the previously held belief that Bach's solo music for strings had no warmth or artistic value. Casals's love of Bach's music carried over into the rest of his life. As he told José Maria Corredor in Conversations With Casals, "I am everyday more convinced that the main-spring of any human enterprise must be moral strength and generosity." Casals came to understand the suffering of the poor as he walked the streets of Barcelona. He vowed to use his music to help his fellow people.

Silenced cello in protest Casals often wrote letters and organized concerts on behalf of the oppressed, and he refused to perform in countries, such as the Soviet Union, Germany, and Italy, whose governments mistreated their citizens. After the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), when General Francisco Franco took power, Casals announced he would never return to Spain while Franco was in charge. He settled in Prades, France, and gave occasional concerts until 1946, when, to take a stand against tyrants such as Franco, Casals vowed never to perform again. However, encouraged by friends, Casals resumed playing in 1950, participating in the Prades Festival organized to honor Bach. At the end of the festival and every concert he gave after that, Casals played "Song of the Birds," a Catalonian folk song, to protest the continued oppression in Spain. In 1956 he settled in Puerto Rico and started the Casals Festival, which led to the creation of a symphony orchestra and a music school on the island. Casals never returned to Spain. Casals also continued to refuse to perform in countries that officially recognized the Franco government.

Until his death in 1973, Casals made only one exception—in 1961 he performed at the White House for U.S. President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963), a man he greatly admired. In 1971, at the age of ninety-five, he performed his "Hymn of the United Nations" before the United Nations General Assembly. Casals sought to inspire harmony among people, with both his cello and his silence. For More Information Blum, David. Casals and the Art of Interpretation. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1977. Casals, Pablo. Song of the Birds: Sayings, Stories, and Impressions of Pablo Casals. London: Robson Books, 1985. Garza, Hedda. Pablo Casals. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1993. Goodnough, David. Pablo Casals: Cellist for the World. Springfield, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 1997. Hargrove, Jim. Pablo Casals: Cellist of Conscience.

Chicago: Children's Press, 1991. User Contributions: Pablo Casals | Biography & History | AllMusic google+ Artist Biography by Blair Johnston As the first modern cello virtuoso, Pablo Casals created a new appreciation of the instrument and its repertory when the concert stage was still considered the exclusive playground of the piano and violin. Casals also devoted his formidable musical skills to composition and conducting, leaving many insightful readings of the standard orchestral repertory to posterity via recordings. He is remembered today as much for his pacifism and regard for human life as for his musicianship (he once stated that "the life of a single child is worth more to me than all my music"). Casals came to his true instrument relatively late in life, having first developed some degree of skill on the piano, violin, and organ. Discovery of the cello at the age of 11 led to studies (from 1887 on) with J. Garcia at the Barcelona Municipal Music School.

After a period of supporting himself playing in local cafés, Casals was granted a royal scholarship to the Madrid Conservatory in 1893, where he worked with Tomás Bretón , and later in Brussels in 1895. After a brief tenure as a cellist at the Folies-Marigny music hall in Paris, Casals returned to teach and perform in Barcelona, and joined the first of a series of notable chamber ensembles with which he would be associated: a piano trio with Belgian violinist Crickboom and well known pianist and composer Enrique Granados . In 1919 Casals founded the Orquestra Pau Casals in Barcelona. Although the project was quite successful, the outbreak of civil war in 1936 forced its dissolution. Casals , who spoke out vehemently against the Franco regime, was forced to seek refuge in the Catalan village of Prades. Following the Second World War, saddened by the lack of any definitive action against the Franco regime by major world powers, Casals elected to cease performing as an act of protest.

Inspired by the Bach bicentenary celebrations of 1950 at the first annual Prades Festival, Casals came out of retirement to begin a new series of recordings and concerts. In 1956 he made a new home in Puerto Rico, where he founded the Puerto Rico Festival. Though nearing 85, he began a campaign for peace in 1962, traveling around the world to conduct performances of his oratorio El pessebre (The Manger). Casals continued to make occasional concert appearances until virtually the end of his life in 1973. Casals ' impact on cello playing in the twentieth century cannot be overestimated. His radical approach to bow and finger technique produced a mechanical prowess far beyond any other cellist of the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. In addition, Casals was the first cellist to incorporate the kind of left-hand shifting techniques which had been employed for decades by violinists, thus allowing for far greater agility on the cello than had been previously thought possible. Always scornful of "flashy," superficial virtuosi, Casals strove tirelessly to develop and maintain the kind of intense musical concentration which he considered to be the true artist's responsibility.

Casals ' virtues as a composer are less unimpeachable; very little of his music was published during his life. Works such as his Hymn to the United Nations (1971), on text by W.H. Auden , and, of course, El pessebre (composed 1943-1960) did receive numerous performances, but his works received little more than cursory notice by the musical establishment. However, the steadfast devotion which so defined his performing persona is evident in such works as the Revérie for cello and piano (1896), or the much later Sonata for violin and piano, which he worked on sporadically from about 1945 to 1972. What It Means To Play Pablo Casals' Cello : Deceptive Cadence : NPR What It Means To Play Pablo Casals' Cello Embed Embed What It Means To Play Pablo Casals' Cello What It Means To Play Pablo Casals' Cello Embed Embed Amit Peled is preparing to re-create a century-old cello recital by Pablo Casals, using the master's own instrument. Here, he shows if off in NPR's Washington, D.C., studios.

Colin Marshall/NPR hide caption toggle caption Colin Marshall/NPR Amit Peled is preparing to re-create a century-old cello recital by Pablo Casals, using the master's own instrument. Here, he shows if off in NPR's Washington, D.C., studios. Colin Marshall/NPR When Amit Peled was 10, his parents gave him a gift: a cassette of music by cello master Pablo Casals. Peled had no classical background; his parents were not musicians. He says his own budding interest in the cello was a scam, a way of getting close to a girl in his town who happened to play the instrument. And yet, every night, he would fall asleep with the tape playing from a boombox beside his bed. The music made an impression. "I would call him the grandfather of classical music of the 20th century — not just for cellists," Peled says. "He really shaped what we know today of how to make a phrase, and was a bridge from the old times, from romantic music, to our day. He played the Brahms Sonata for Brahms.

I mean, that link is something that you can't stop thinking about." Peled's obsession became devotion; today he's an acclaimed cellist himself. Now, he's found another way to follow in his idol's footsteps. On Thursday, Feb. 12, Peled will appear at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, where Casals gave a recital 100 years ago this week, to perform the exact same program in a live webcast . More than that, he'll do it with the same instrument: Casals' 1733 Goffriller cello, presented to him by the late master's widow. Article continues after sponsorship He joined David Greene in NPR's Washington, D.C., studios to play the instrument and talk about its significance and his own journey to this moment. Hear their conversation at the audio link.

Centuries-Old Cello Is Awakened; Smells Like The Maestro's Pipe Centuries-Old Cello Is Awakened; Smells Like The Maestro's Pipe Embed Embed What It Means To Play Pablo Casals' Cello What It Means To Play Pablo Casals' Cello Embed Embed In the second part of a conversation, David Greene talks to Amit Peled about playing the cello of his idol, the late Pablo Casales. Peled performs a recital at Baltimore's Peabody Institute Thursday. DAVID GREENE, HOST: Did you ever go up in the attic or down in the basement and find a really old piece of furniture and think, I could use this? Well, here's someone who can relate. AMIT PELED: If you take an old furniture from 1733 - an old antique that was covered for years and years and years, and you want to put it back in the living room, you'll have to probably fix it. There are cracks. You'll have to glue again. You'll have to take the dust away. At the end of the day, it's a piece of wood. GREENE: That's Amit Peled.

And the piece of wood he's talking about is a centuries-old cello once owned by his idol, the late, great cellist Pablo Casals. As a child, Amit listened to Casals' music on cassette, again and again. And as he told us on yesterday's program, the late maestro's wife loaned him Casals' cello after some probing interviews. We wanted to hear more today about what it was like to first take that cello out of the case. PELED: Your dream is, OK, I'll take this cello, and I'll put the bow and it will sound like the most amazing cello I remember from that tape cassette from my childhood. But I took it out, and it was like an old man saying to me, why are you bothering me? Let me keep sleeping. What are you doing? And I could smell his pipe. Casals would teach with his pipe on. And the ashes would fall into the cello. He wouldn't care. He loved the cello, but he would just - full of ashes. And you know people who smoke pipe. You smell the pipe through them all the time. GREENE: Yeah. PELED: And I could smell it.

The cello was alive in that sense but was dead musically. GREENE: After some restoration, it is now alive. And he played it for us in our studios. (SOUNDBITE OF CELLO) GREENE: And Amit will play this cello again tonight at Baltimore's Peabody Institute, where he teaches. He'll be performing the same set of music that Casals himself performed at Peabody on this very day a hundred years ago. PELED: And I like to call it - it's like a good meal, starting with aperitif, which is a Handel sonata. Then comes a big steak, which in this case is a Bach suite. And then, second half, it's all desserts. GREENE: These will be some more fun pieces that you play there. PELED: Fun pieces, yeah. That's exactly the word - short pieces, fun, short poetry. Who goes to a restaurant and eats three steaks and then feel good? GREENE: I love the metaphor. So you are making a cello recital cool again? PELED: That's exactly what I want to do. GREENE: Amit, I don't know.

Do we say break a leg for a cello recital? PELED: You can say break a leg. GREENE: Break a leg. PELED: I just hope to stay alive after this recital. It's little bit of pressure. GREENE: Well, thank you for coming in and chatting with us. PELED: My pleasure. (SOUNDBITE OF CELLO) GREENE: That's Amit Peled, playing on the cello that belonged to his idol, Pablo Casals. Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc. , an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Pablo Casals (Conductor, Cello) - Short Biography Born: December 29, 1876 - Vendrell, Catalonia, Spain Died: October 22, 1973 - San Juan, Puerto Rico The great Spanish cellist (and conductor), Pablo Casals (actually, Pau Carlos Salvador Defilló), legend has it, supported by Casals himself, that he was conceived when Johannes Brahms began his B-flat Major Quartet, of which Casals owned the original manuscript, and that he was born when J. Brahms completed its composition. This legend is rendered moot by the fact that the quartet in question was completed and performed before Casals was even born. But even the ascertainable facts of the life of Casals make it a glorious tale. His father, the parish organist and choirmaster in Vendrell, gave Casals instruction in piano, violin, and organ. When Casals was 11, he first heard the cello performed by a group of traveling musicians, and decided to study the instrument. In 1888 his mother took him to Barcelona, where he enrolled in the Escuela Municipal de Música.

There he studied cello with José García, theory with José Rodoreda, and piano with Joaquín Malats and Francisco Costa Llobera. His progress as a cellist was nothing short of prodigious, and he was able to give a solo recital in Barcelona at the age of 14, on February 23, 1891; he graduated with honors in 1893. Albéniz, who heard him play in a cafe trio, gave Pablo Casals a 1etter of introduction to Count Morphy, the private secretary to María Cristina, the Queen Regent, in Madrid. Casals was asked to play at informal concerts in the palace, and was granted a royal stipend for composition study with Tomás Bretón. In 1893 he entered the Conservatory de Musica y Declamacion in Madrid, where he attended chamber music classes of Jesus de Monasterio. He also played in the newly organized Quartet Society there (1894-1895).

In 1895 he went to Paris and, deprived of his stipend from Spain, earned a living by playing 2nd cello in the theater orchestra of the Folies Marigny. He decided to return to Spain, where he received, in 1896, an appointment to the faculty of the Escuela Municipal de Música in Barcelona; he was also principal cellist in the orchestra of the Gran Teatro del Liceo. In 1897 he appeared as soloist with the Madrid Symphony Orchestra, and was awarded the Order of Carlos III from the Queen. His career as a cello virtuoso was then assured. In 1899 Pablo Casals played at. the Crystal Palace in London, and later for Queen Victoria at her summer residence at Cowes, Isle of Wight. On November 12, 1899, he appeared as a soloist at a prestigious Lamoureux Concert in Paris, and played with Lamoureux again on December 17, 1899, obtaining exceptional success With both the public and the press.

He toured Spain and Holland with the pianist Harold Bauer (1900-1901); then made his first tour of the USA (1901-1902). In 1903 he made a grand tour of South America. On January 15, 1904, he was invited to play at the White House for President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1906 he became associated with the talented young Portuguese cellist Guilhermina Suggia, who studied with him and began to appear in concerts as Mme. P. Casals-Suggia, although they were not legally married. Their liaison was dissolved in 1912; in 1914 Casals married the American socialite and singer Susan Metcalfe; they were separated in 1928, but did not divorce until 1957. Continuing his brilliant career, Pablo Casals organized, in Paris, a concert trio with the piariist Alfred Cortot and the violinist Thibaud; they played concerts together until 1937.

Casals also became interested in conducting, and in 1919 he organized, in Barcelona, the Orquesta Pall Casals and led itsftrst concert on October 13, 1920. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the Orquesta Pau Casals ceased its activities. Casals was an ardent supporter of the Spanish Republican government, and after its defeat vowed never to return to Spain until democracy was restored. He settled in the French village of Prades, on the Spanish frontier; between 1939 and 1942 he made sporadic appearances as a cellist in the unoccupied zone of southern France and in Switzerland. So fierce was his opposition to the Franco regime in Spain that he declined to appear in countries that recognized the totalitarian Spanish government, making an exception when he took part ill a concert of chamber music in the White House on November 13, 1961, at the invitation of President John F. Kennedy, whom he admired.

In 1950 Pablo Casals resumed his career as conductor and cellist at the Prades Festival, organized in commemoration of the bicentennial of the death of J.S. Bach; he continued leading the Prades Festivals until 1966. He made his permanent residence in 1956, when he settled in San Juan, Puerto Rico (his mother was born there when the island was still under Spanish rule). In 1957 an annual Festival Casals was inaugurated there. During all these years, he developed energetic activities as a pedagogue, leading master classes in Switzerland, Italy, Berkeley, California, and Marlboro, Vermount, some of which were televised. Pablo Casals was also a composer; perhaps his most effective work is La sardana, for an ensemble of cellos, which he composed in 1926. His oratorio El pessebre (The Manger) was performed for the first time in Acapulco, Mexico, on December 17, 1960.

One of his last compositions was the Himno a las Naciones Unidas (Hymn of the United Nations); he conducted its ftrst performance in a special concert at the United Nations on October 24, 1971, 2 months before his 95th birthday. On August 3, 1957, at the age of 80, Casals married his young pupil Marta Montañez; following his death, she married the pianist Eugene Istomin , on February 15, 1975. Casals did not live to see the liberation of Spain from the Franco dictatorship, but he was posthumously honored by the Spanish government under King Juan Carlos I, which issued in 1976 a commemorative postage stamp in honor of his 100th birthday.

Source: Bakerן¿½s Biographical Dictionary of 20th Century Classical Musicians (1997) Contributed by Aryeh Oron (March 2002) Amit Peled to recreate Pablo Casals' 1915 recital at the Peabody Institute - Baltimore Sun Tim Smith Contact Reporter The Baltimore Sun A day in Baltimore's musical history will be recreated 100 years later, with help from a valuable cello. Time machines aren't always confined to science fiction. On Thursday at the Peabody Institute, the clock will be turned back 100 years for the re-creation of a recital given there by famed cellist Pablo Casals — played on the same cello that Casals used for that Feb. 12, 1915, program. The performer this week will be Amit Peled, the dynamic Israeli-born cellist and Peabody faculty member. A couple of years ago, the Casals Foundation offered Peled the loan of the instrument, purchased by Casals two years before that Peabody appearance. Peled has been on a high ever since.

He practically glows when talking about the cello, crafted in Venice by Matteo Goffriller in 1733. It features a lush, reddish veneer and, on the back, the clear indication of where Casals' left leg rubbed against it for decades as he played. Musicians are known to anthropomorphize instruments. "I called it 'Pablo' from day one," Peled says. "A cello has always been a woman to me, but somehow, this one is a man." This Goffriller cello, insured for $4 million, is owned by the foundation that Casals established a few years before his death in 1973 at the age of 96. Periodically, the instrument has been available on loan to musicians, with the approval of Casals' widow, Marta Casals Istomin (a former student of Casals, she married him in 1957 when she was 20). Pablo Casals, ca. 1915-1920 Pablo Casals, ca.

1915-1920 (Library of Congress) Through a mutual friend, a meeting between Istomin and Peled was arranged in 2012. "I played for Marta at her apartment in Washington," Peled, 40, says. "I was shaking. She criticized everything about my playing. But then she said, 'Well, let's have a glass of wine.' She told me I should visit her in New York and play her husband's cello, which she had there. But she said, 'You're too big; the cello is quite small.' " The instrument had been a good fit for the 5-foot-4 Casals. Peled is 13 inches taller. But he was not deterred and soon took Casals Istomin up on her offer. Program of Pablo Casals' 1915 recital at Peabody Peabody Institute Program of Pablo Casals' 1915 recital at Peabody Institute Program of Pablo Casals' 1915 recital at Peabody Institute (Peabody Institute) "I like to say I could smell Casals' pipe in the cello," Peled says.

"I felt for some reason I should play the second movement of Dvorak's concerto, and immediately the sound of his 1937 recording came to me. I stopped. I couldn't believe I was playing the same cello that was on that famous recording. Marta just said, 'Yeah, but the Maestro would have played it faster.' " Nonetheless, Casals Istomin, who is expected to attend Thursday's recital, decided Peled should have the loan of the cello. She agreed to his recommendation for a major restoration of the instrument, which was done at the New York shop Reed Yeboah Fine Violins. The process took a year. A new neck was needed. The bridge, the piece that holds the strings above the cello, had sunk over time. Inside the instrument, the restorers found several wormholes "that had to be refilled and reinforced," Peled says. A YouTube clip shows Peled trying out the restored Goffriller before a beaming Casals Istomin. After months of touring with the instrument, Peled's affection for it has only grown. He finds it quite different from his other cello, made by Andrea Guarneri in 1689.

"The Guarneri's sound is like a tenor, like Pavarotti, a golden sound," Peled says. "The Casals cello is more earthy, more human, I would say, more like an old man talking. Since the restoration, the sound has opened up a lot. And as we work more together, I hope it will become also golden." Any string instrument can reveal distinctive qualities depending on who plays it, and how it is played. "At the end of the day, if you don't impose your sound on [Casals' cello], it brings out your own voice," Peled says. "I've found a way to be myself on this cello." The first time that Peled, at an early age, heard the tone Casals drew from that instrument, he was hooked. "A present from my family in Israel was a cassette of Pablo Casals," he says. "I fell in love with the cello because of that sound. I fell asleep listening to it nightly. But I was mostly interested in basketball then. I never thought I would be a cellist." Still, when he was 14, Peled decided on the cello over hoops.

After studies in Tel Aviv, he made his way to the United States, where he studied with the Bernard Greenhouse. Greenhouse, best known as a founder of the greatly admired Beaux Arts Trio, had been a student of Casals. Peled, who went on to earn a degree at the New England Conservatory, joined the Peabody faculty when he was in his 20s. He makes his home in Pikesville with his wife and children ("I spend more time with [Casals'] cello than I do with them," he says). Last year, one of Peled's students happened to stumble upon a collection of Casals material in Peabody's archives, including a copy of the program from 1915.

The Baltimore Sun review of that recital described Casals as "unquestionably the most distinguished player on this instrument now in the public eye." In addition to high praise for the cellist's artistry, critic John Oldmixon Lambdin singled out the cello itself: "It is doubtful if any richer, rounder or more vibrant tone has been heard here." In addition to an unaccompanied Bach suite, Casals' program included several works for cello and piano, among them Beethoven's Variations on a Theme from Mozart's "The Magic Flute;" a showpiece by Saint-Saens; and three short, elegant works by Faure, the sort that rarely get attention today, deemed by some to be too lightweight. Peled, who will be joined by pianist Noreen Polera in Thursday's performance, had his work cut out for him preparing for the concert. "Half of it I had never played," he says. "I had to sit on my butt and learn this music. Faure's 'Papillons' is usually played so horribly by kids you don't want to touch it. But these little pieces are like poetry and they're really hard to play well.

Getting ready for this recital has been a great journey." That journey turned out to have a side effect for Peled. "It made me change my attitude to teaching," he says. "I now insist that all my students learn some of these short pieces that cellists used to play. I tell them, don't you ever want to watch 'Seinfeld' and eat pizza sometimes? Why not learn pieces of music that just makes you smile? I see it as a mission. "And this cello gives me more authority," Peled adds with a laugh. The cellist, who plans to repeat the 1915 program in several places next season, including the Kennedy Center , also tries to get students interested in Casals. "They will listen to his recordings and all they'll say is, 'It's a little bit out of tune,' " Peled says.

"That today's mentality: 'I need to play in tune and get a job.' They totally miss the point of what it means to make a phrase." On Thursday, Peled will demonstrate his approach to phrasing with the help of a 282-year-old instrument that defined the man he calls "the father of all cellists." "We're talking about history here," Peled says. "I feel a heavy burden." tim.smith@baltsun.com If you go Amit Peled performs the 1915 Pablo Casals recital at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Peabody, 17 W. Mount Vernon Place. Tickets are $5 to $15. Call 410-234-4800, or go to peabody.jhu.edu. The concert will also be live-streamed at ustream.tv/channel/johnshopkinsu. Pablo Casals | Biography, Albums, Streaming Links | AllMusic Pablo Casals Biography by Blair Johnston As the first modern cello virtuoso, Pablo Casals created a new appreciation of the instrument and its repertory.

Two men, one cello, a century apart | Hub Two men, one cello, a century apart Johns Hopkins faculty member re-creates Pablo Casals' 1915 concert at Peabody Image caption: Playing the 1733 instrument owned by Pablo Casals, Peabody faculty member Amit Peled will reprise the recital that the celebrated Spanish cellist performed at the Conservatory on Feb. 12, 1915. Image credit: MARSHALL CLARKE By Bret McCabe / Published Jan-Feb 2015 Amit Peled looks around as if he can't believe his ears. The Peabody Institute cellist is sitting in the Bank of America lounge on the second floor of the Mount Vernon campus's Leakin Hall for a photo shoot, and the photographer has asked him to play. He draws his bow across the cello's strings and bathes the sunny lounge in rich, gorgeous music. Almost immediately Peled looks up and remarks on how great the room sounds. He turns to a student sitting nearby and asks, "Do we ever have concerts in here?" The lounge would likely not be big enough to accommodate the audience interested in Peled's Feb.

12 performance, which is part of the Sylvia Adalman Chamber Series. On that day Peled performs the same solo cello recital that celebrated Spanish cellist Pablo Casals performed at Peabody a century earlier. In the Feb. 7, 1915, edition of The Sun, critic John Oldmixon Lambdin wrote that "an event of the greatest magnitude will take place at the Peabody Conservatory when Pablo Casals, who is called 'the world's greatest cellist,' will be heard in recital." And Peled will perform on the cello that Casals played 100 years ago. The cello, made by noted Venetian luthier Matteo Goffriller in 1733, was acquired by Casals in 1913 and became the instrument he turned to for the rest of his life. Casals died in 1973 at the age of 96, and the cello came under the care of his widow, Marta Casals, a cellist and formidable musical force herself.

In 1956 the couple co-founded the Casals Festival, an annual event in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where Casals had eventually settled after exiling himself from Franco's Spain in 1938. They also helped start up the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. Marta eventually remarried, and she would go on to serve as artistic director of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and as president of the Manhattan School of Music in New York. Throughout, she watched over Casals' cello, which she occasionally lent to cellists and which will eventually be donated to the Casals Foundation in Barcelona. In 2012, Peled had the opportunity to meet the musician's widow at her Washington apartment. "When I first met Ms. Casals, the intention was not to get the cello," Peled says between takes with the photographer. "It was just to get to know her. I came to her apartment and played for her.

She said, 'Usually I shut my ears off when I hear a young cellist, but I didn't do that when you played.'" Also see: What it means to play Pablo Casals' cello (NPR) When standing, the dashingly handsome and casually charismatic 40-year-old Peled cuts a towering, lean figure. As he unpacked the cello before this photo shoot, it looked diminutive in his hands. When he sits to play, however, they complement each other like tango partners. Continuing his story, Peled says, "Then she said, 'Let's have a glass of wine,' so we did." She remarked, he says, about his being a big guy and Casals' cello being small, but then suggested that if Peled had the time in the near future, he could come by her New York apartment and play it. Peled laughs, remembering the thought that raced through his head: What do you mean if I have the time? About two months later, he met her in New York and played Casals' 1733 Matteo Goffriller. Peled says it took some getting used to, but once he did, "it was amazing.

And I thought that was it—I had this amazing opportunity to play this cello." The photographer asks Peled to resume playing, and he again fills the room with lovely music, speaking quietly as the flash goes off. "You've got to understand, I grew up the furthest you can imagine from classical music, in a small community in Israel in the mountains," he says. "And when I started playing cello, the first thing I got when I was 10 was a tape of Casals playing on this cello. So from that moment to actually playing on this cello was quite a journey. So when a few weeks later [Ms. Casals] wrote me an email saying she decided to lend me the cello, I mean … ." His voice trails off, and his eyes trace a circle around the room, suggesting he doesn't quite have the words to describe the honor. He played Casals' cello for a few months before he realized it needed some work done on it to restore it to its full, rich character. Over the years the bridge and the neck that secured the strings had sunk, and some general restoration needed to be made to its woodwork.

Peled says he only recently received the cello back from a shop in New York, where the restoration work took about a year to complete. He stops for a moment to point out two places where the varnish is faded away on the back of the cello, one low and one higher up. Peled says that's where Casals' knee and chest rubbed against the instrument when he played, a reminder of just how much time musicians spend with their instruments: Their bodies leave marks on each other. So what made this cello so special to Casals? What separates one cello's sound from another? "Nobody really knows," Peled says. "It's a group of reasons—age of the wood, the varnish, the craftsmanship. But what makes this one different? It sounds like a human, this cello, sort of like an old man talking. It sounds like someone is actually talking to you, which I think is the quality Casals liked about it." Asked if he likes it, Peled shoots his interviewer a what-do-you-think? glance. The photographer then requests Peled to look in a certain direction while he plays for a few shots. He does so, closing his eyes and concentrating.

This interview and photo session were catching Peled before he and the cello were to leave for tours of Russia and the Midwest, where he would perform sections, but not the entirety, of Casals' 1915 recital, which will debut at Peabody. Peled found out about that century-ago concert from undergraduate Javier Martin Iglesias, a cello student from Spain who was doing research for a paper when a librarian told him about Casals' Peabody performances. Peled says the idea of reprising the concert came to him immediately after Martin Iglesias told him about it. It's a golden opportunity to acknowledge how Casals, his music, and his cello continue to inspire young musicians today. And on Feb. 28, 2016, Peled will perform Casals' 1915 Peabody recital at the Kennedy Center with a new solo cello piece commissioned for this cello, a way to keep its journey going into the next century. But who is the composer? Has he heard the piece yet? How long does he get to borrow the cello? So many questions are racing through the brain that they get thrown at Peled in quick succession.

He opens his eyes, smiles, and shakes his head quickly, whispering, "Let's wait until the end of the piece." And for the next few minutes, everybody in the room falls silent, listening to the cello speak. On Feb. 12, Amit Peled re-creates the recital given by Pablo Casals at Peabody on the same date in 1915; 8 p.m., Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall. Tickets are $15, general admission, $10 senior citizens, $5 students; 410-234-4800. Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall, Peabody. EMI Masters - Cello Suites / Pablo Casals: Amazon.co.uk: Music EMI Masters - Cello Suites / Pablo Casals Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Audio CD (15 Feb.

2010) Number of Discs: 2 Sample this album Artist (Sample) 1 Listen Now Buy: Â£0.99 Sold by Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.. By placing your order, you agree to our Terms of Use . Product Description By Ralph Moore TOP 50 REVIEWER on 18 April 2010 Format: Audio CD There can be few classical music lovers who are not familiar with the true fairy-story in which, in 1890, the thirteen-year-old Pablo Casals, newly enamoured of the cello and foraging with his father in the back-street music-shops of Barcelona, happened across the Grützmacher's edition of Bach's lost "Cello Suites" on a dusty shelf. Prodigiously talented, Casals was already studying by day in the Escola Municipal de Música and moonlighting in a café trio; the re-discovery of Bach's neglected suites changed both his life and the course of twentieth century music for good. He practised them assiduously for another thirteen years before finally feeling able to perform them in public. To do so, he had to evolve new techniques and arrive at an understanding of this remarkable music.

He came to espouse a philosophy of performance based upon the principle that no matter how abstracted, stylised and removed this music had become, it was still essentially the music of dance and as such required the performer to invest it with a Terpsichorean vigour, vitality, elegance and grace. It was another quarter of a century before he could be persuaded by EMI to record them. Casals released these suites from the fate of many a Bach masterpiece over two hundred years, of being considered a dry, technical exercise of no particular value beyond its use as practice fodder to engender facility and flexibility. Such was Casals' emotional investment in this music that he found performing and recording them physically exhausting - though in later years he would willingly perform from them for grateful visitors such as Rostropovich. Read more ›

Question: What instrument is associated with Pablo Cassals?
Answer: Cello