Today we celebrate the birthday of Pablo Casals. Casals, called Pau Casals in his native Catalan language, was born on December 29, 1876, and he lived for almost a century, dying in 1973.
Casals began his professional career in 1895 playing cello in a theater orchestra in Paris, but he didn’t stay there long, and by the time he was 25 he was well on his way to recognition as the greatest cellist of his era. Many consider him among the greatest cellists of any era, and he was also a conductor and composer. Casals was a man of enormous personal magnetism, and through his playing, his teaching, his conducting, and his recordings—especially his recordings of the solo cello suites of J.S. Bach—he inspired generation after generation of musicians. He once said, “They call me a great cellist. I am not a cellist. I am a musician. That is much more important.”
A Minute with Miles – a production of South Carolina Public Radio, made possible by the J.M. Smith Corporation.
