40 Facts About Pablo Casals

Pau Casals i Defillo, usually known in English by his Castilian Spanish name Pablo Casals, was a Spanish and Puerto Rican cellist, composer, and conductor.

Pablo Casals is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century and one of the greatest cellists of all time.

Pablo Casals 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 of the Bach Cello Suites he made from 1936 to 1939.

Pablo Casals was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 by President John F Kennedy .

Pablo Casals's father, Carles Casals i Ribes, was a parish organist and choirmaster.

Related searches

Pablo Casals gave Casals instruction in piano, songwriting, violin, and organ.

When Pablo Casals was small 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.

When Pablo Casals was eleven, he first heard the real cello performed by a group of traveling musicians, and decided to dedicate himself to the instrument.

Pablo Casals spent the next 13 years practicing them every day before he would perform them in public for the first time.

Pablo Casals made prodigious progress as a cellist; on 23 February 1891 he gave a solo recital in Barcelona at the age of fourteen.

Pablo Casals graduated from the Escola with honours five years later.

Pablo Casals was asked to play at informal concerts in the palace, and was granted a royal stipend to study composition at the Madrid Royal Conservatory in Madrid with Victor Mirecki.

Pablo Casals was appointed principal cellist in the orchestra of Barcelona's opera house, the Liceu.

In 1899, Pablo Casals played at The Crystal Palace in London, and later for Queen Victoria at Osborne House, her summer residence, accompanied by Ernest Walker.

On 15 January 1904, Pablo Casals was invited to play at the White House for President Theodore Roosevelt.

New York Times of 9 April 1911 announced that Pablo Casals would perform at the London Musical Festival to be held at the Queen's Hall on the second day of the Festival .

In 1914, Pablo Casals married the American socialite and singer Susan Metcalfe; they were separated in 1928, but did not divorce until 1957.

Back in Paris, Pablo Casals organized a trio with the pianist Alfred Cortot and the violinist Jacques Thibaud; they played concerts and made recordings until 1937.

Pablo Casals became interested in conducting, and in 1919 he organized, in Barcelona, the Pau Pablo Casals Orchestra and led its first concert on 13 October 1920.

Pablo Casals was an ardent supporter of the Spanish Republican government, and after its defeat vowed not to return to Spain until democracy was restored.

Pablo Casals performed at the Gran Teatre del Liceu on 19 October 1938, possibly his last performance in Spain during his exile.

Pablo Casals was mocked by the Francoist press, which wrote articles deriding him as "a donkey", and was fined one million pesetas for his political views.

Pablo Casals made a notable exception when he took part in a concert of chamber music in the White House on 13 November 1961, at the invitation of President John F Kennedy, whom he admired.

Pablo Casals played another cello by Goffriller dated 1710, and a Tononi from 1730.

In 1950, he resumed his career as conductor and cellist at the Prades Festival in Conflent, organized in commemoration of the bicentenary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach; Pablo Casals agreed to participate on condition that all proceeds were to go to a refugee hospital in nearby Perpignan.

Related searches

Pablo Casals traveled extensively to Puerto Rico in 1955, inaugurating the annual Pablo Casals Festival the next year.

In 1955, Pablo Casals married as his second wife long-time associate Francesca Vidal de Capdevila, who died that same year.

Pablo Casals made an impact in the Puerto Rican music scene by founding the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra in 1958, and the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico in 1959.

Pablo Casals presented it to the United Nations during their anniversary in 1963.

Pablo Casals was initiated as an honorary member of the Epsilon Iota chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity at Florida State University in 1963.

Pablo Casals was later awarded the fraternity's Charles E Lutton Man of Music Award in 1973.

Pablo Casals conducted its first performance in a special concert at the United Nations on 24 October 1971, two months before his 95th birthday.

Pablo Casals accepted the medal and made his famous "I Am a Catalan" speech, where he stated that Catalonia had the first democratic parliament, long before England did.

In 1973, invited by his friend Isaac Stern, Pablo Casals arrived at Jerusalem to conduct the youth orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.

Pablo Casals died in 1973 at Auxilio Mutuo Hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the age of 96, from complications of a heart attack he had had three weeks earlier.

Pablo Casals did not live to see the end of the Francoist State, which occurred two years later, but he was posthumously honoured by the Spanish government under King Juan Carlos I which in 1976 issued a commemorative postage stamp depicting Casals, in honour of the centenary of his birth.

In 1989, Pablo Casals was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Pablo Casals is by common consent the greatest cellist that ever lived.

American comedian George Carlin, in his interview for the Archive of American Television, refers to Pablo Casals when discussing the restless nature of an artist's persona.

Pablo Casals' motet, composed in 1932, is frequently performed today.