Pablo Casals
Pau Casals i Defilló[1][2] (Catalan: [ˈpaw kəˈzalz i ðəfiˈʎo]; 29 December 1876 – 22 October 1973), known in English by his Spanish name Pablo Casals,[3][4][5][6] was a Spanish and Puerto Rican cellist, composer, and conductor. He made many recordings throughout his career of solo, chamber, and orchestral music, including some as conductor, but he is perhaps best remembered for the recordings he made of the Cello Suites by Bach. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy (though the ceremony was presided over by Lyndon B. Johnson).
"Casals" redirects here. For other people with this surname, see Casals (surname). For the medieval rural settlements, see Casalis.Biography[edit]
Childhood and early years[edit]
Casals was born in El Vendrell, Tarragona, Spain. His father, Carles Casals i Ribes, was a parish organist and choirmaster. He gave Casals instruction in piano, songwriting, violin, and organ. He was also a very strict disciplinarian. When Casals was young his father would pull the piano out from the wall and have him and his brother, Artur, stand behind it and name the notes and the scales that his father was playing. At the age of four, Casals could play the violin, piano and flute; at the age of six he played the violin well enough to perform a solo in public. His first encounter with a cello-like instrument was from witnessing a local travelling Catalan musician, who played a cello-strung broom handle. Upon request, his father built him a crude cello, using a gourd as a sound-box. When Casals was eleven, he first heard the real cello performed by a group of traveling musicians, and decided to dedicate himself to the instrument.
His mother, Doña Pilar Defilló de Casals, was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, to parents who were Catalan immigrants in Puerto Rico.[7][8] In 1888, she took her son to Barcelona, where he was enrolled in the Escola Municipal de Música.[7] There he studied cello, theory, and piano. In 1890, when he was 13, he found a tattered copy of Bach's six cello suites in a second-hand music store in Barcelona. He spent the next 13 years practicing them every day before he would perform them in public for the first time.[9] Casals would later make his own version of the six suites.[10] He made prodigious progress as a cellist; on 23 February 1891 he gave a solo recital in Barcelona at the age of fourteen. He graduated from the Escola with honours five years later.