The Pablo Casals Festival

Life of Pablo Casals before his coming to Prades

Catalonian roots of Pablo Casals.

His father, Carlos (1852-1906), was native of Barcelona and came to live in the small town of Vendrell, about 50 miles away from the capital of Catalonia. His mother, Pilar (1853-1931), was born in Mayagüez, on the island of Puerto Rico. She belonged to a respectable family of Catalonian ascent that came to live in the island around the years 1840’s. Even though he was a member of a rich colonial society, Pablo Casals’ grandfather was a liberal who fought his lifelong against the autocratic domination of Spain over the island. Exasperated by this stance and victim of business failures, the old man and later, his son, decided to put an end to their lives. His grandmother and her daughter, aged 18, took then refuge at relative’s in Vendrell.

Pilar, like all the other young maids of respectable families of Vendrell, was taking piano lessons with Carlos Casals, the organist at Santa Ana church. Their meeting was soon to end in a wedding. The young couple settled in a house of Santa Ana Street, not far from the church. On the first floor, Carlos was giving private music classes. He also regularly played the harmonium in a small itinerant orchestra that travelled from place to place. The newlyweds lost their first baby but were soon overwhelmed with happiness by the birth of Pablo, on December 29th, 1876. They had decided to give him a Spanish first name "Pablo", but later, the musician adopted the Catalonian version of his first name: "Pau".
Pilar gave birth to 11 children of which only 3 survived. The first memories of Pablo were related to the sea. As a matter of fact, his parents had taken the habit of bringing their children to the beach, at the hermitage of Sant Salvador, 3 miles away from home.

His parents soon realized that young Pablo possessed a real musical talent. Nobody was surprised. With his father, a music teacher, he had been immersed since his birth in a musical universe. At the age of 5, he had been admitted as second soprano at Vendrell church. Later on, his father taught him the piano, the violin and music composition. One of his greatest childhood pleasures was when he was tall enough to reach the pedals of the organ, at Santa Ana church; he could then play the organ when his father was sick.

The cello.

Pablo was just 11 when he experienced a genuine revelation: a trio had come to give a concert in the hall of the Vendrell Catholic Centre. Josep Garcia, a teacher at the Barcelona Music Conservatoire, was playing the cello. Pablo was enthusiastic and told his father: "That’s the nicest instrument I’ve ever heard. That’s the one I want to play". But Carlos had other views for his son. He had contacted a carpenter and had asked him to take Pablo as an apprentice.

Pilar, conscious of his son’s talent could not accept this. The following year, she took him to Barcelona where he could study the cello. He was registered in Josep Garcia class. To make a little money, he played every night at the Café Tost located in a suburb of the town. One day, he was accompanied by Mr. Tost, his employer, and attended a concert by Richard Strauss.

All day long, Pablo was studying at the Conservatoire. On the evening, he would play music and when he had some free time, he would occupy it to improve his technique at the cello. During the summer, he took his father’s habit and joined an itinerant orchestra.

The impact of Bach

Mr. Tost asked Pablo Casals to give a short classical concert every Sunday. In order to comply with this obligation, his father often came to Barcelona and helped his son find new scores. One day, by mere chance, Pablo discovered the scores of J.S. Bach’s Six Suites in a heap of dusty papers. He worked on them for 12 years before he dare play them in public. "The more I progressed in the study of the Suites, an unknown world of grandeur and beauty was unveiling itself in front of me. The emotions I felt during this long lasting toil are among the purest and the strongest I encountered in my life as an artist".

At the same time, the Catalonian musician, Isaac Albéniz heard of "el nen" (the child), a young boy that played the cello so well. He came to listen to him at the Café Tost and as soon the concert ended, he rushed to embrace him. In order to help, he gave him a letter of recommendation addressed to the  Earl of Morphy, a musician and friend of the arts but overall the private secretary of her Majesty Maria-Cristina, Queen of Spain. But time had not yet come and Pablo had to finish his studies in Barcelona.

Royal contacts

Once his diploma achieved, he was then 17 years old, his mother took him to Madrid and made use of the letter of recommendation to the Earl of Morphy. The latter listened to Pablo play the cello and immediately decided to take him under his wings.
He introduced him to the high society and had him play in front of Infant Isabel who was a sister of Alfonso XIII. Soon after that, he played for Maria-Cristina. The latter, enthusiastic, granted him a monthly allowance that enabled his mother and two younger brothers Lluis and Enric to come to live in Madrid with Pablo.

The Earl of Morphy changed from guardian to foster father. He advised him in his readings and sent him to broaden his taste in the Prado and even to follow the Parliament sessions. After each activity, young Pablo had to submit a written report of his day’s work.

Pablo Casals became a friend of the royal family and established a relation with the future king, Alfonso, whose private tutor was nobody else than Morphy.

After 3 years of studies at the Madrid Conservatoire, Pablo Casals had finished with all proposed teaching. The Earl of Morphy encouraged him to study at the Brussels Conservatoire which was renowned as the best in the world for string instruments.
But he didn’t get along with his teacher, lost his royal scholarship and was finally stranded in Paris where he played with the Folies Marigny orchestra. He fell sick and had to retreat to Barcelona where he found himself at the place of Josep Garcia, his first teacher.

During a tour in Portugal, he was invited to play at the Royal Palace by King Carlos and Queen Amelia. He was then 22. Later on, he returned to Paris and presented himself to Mr. Lamoureux, director of Lamoureux Concerts, with a letter of recommendation of the Earl of Morphy. He was admitted to play and as soon as his first performance, he was a tremendous success in Paris and during the international tours as well.

Paris and the international tours

When the Earl of Morphy died, Pablo Casals was already on his way to triumph. He settled in the Villa Molitor, in Auteuil and started tours, one after another, on a fast rhythm. He was a guest of fashionable circles and made friends with Gabriel Fauré, Camille Saint Saëns, Maurice Ravel and Henri Bergson. He took side for the "dreyfusards", since he used to say "I always stood for the victims of injustice and persecutions".
In London he met Hans Richter and established a relation with him. He toured almost all the countries of the world and was always on a train or aboard a packet boat. He was a member of what we would call now the Ť jet set ť and was a guest of the most prominent persons in the realm of arts, whatever country he was visiting.
With Alfred Cortot et Jacques Thibaud, he constituted a prestigious trio; he also began a long lasting friendship with pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski who remained a faithful friend of his for decades.
In Russia, he met Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin and played several times with Rachmaninov as a director. At the turn of the century, during a concert in Brussels, Elisabeth, Queen of Belgium asked him to visit her in her lodge, during an intermission. I was the start of a long period of friendship with the royal couple formed by King Albert and Queen Elisabeth.
A few years after, Europe followed by the rest of the world sank into WW2 for five years. Pablo Casals moved to New York and gave concerts everywhere in the United States. He was then at the climax of his glory.

Barcelona and exile

In 1919, Pablo Casals was beginning a new phase of his career in Barcelona. He had decided to change his first name to Pau and when he founded his orchestra, he named it: "Orquestra Pau Casals". His idea was to give a new momentum to the musical life of the Catalonian capital. He had hired musicians and set down his objectives: “My first concern was to create an atmosphere of artistic fervor, to awake or to reinforce in each of them a sense of responsibility, to reach a maximum of efficiency in order to make all of them feel as if they were soloists”. The enterprise was not profitable all the time, but Pablo Casals balanced the accounts with his own money. The orchestra was managed by a group of faithful friends such as Felip Capdevila and his wife Francesca. He had a beautiful house built on Sant Salvador beach, where he used to spend all his summer holidays as a child.
Social uprisings were starting in Spain and Pablo Casals felt deeply concerned by that kind of problems. In Barcelona, he created " L’Associació Obrera de Concerts" (Workers Concert Association) that became a huge success: more than 2,500 workers were present at each concert.

Then, in 1936, the tragedy of civil war burst all over Spain. Pablo Casals had to leave his homeland. He found refuge in Paris, at a former student’s home, Maurice Eisenberg. 

In 1939, following the advice of a Catalonian friend, he came to settle in Prades, a little town at the piedmont of Mount Canigou, in French Catalonia.