Pablo Casals

A charismatic presence, [Casals] embraces each work with the passion of a devoted horticulturist tending his most precious flowers … I can't think of any other interpreters who so successfully underline the sheer inventiveness of Beethoven's writing.

Spanish cellist Pablo Casals ceased performing in 1946 to protest the world's indifference to the oppressive Franco regime then in power in his homeland. The silence of the cellist, then in his 70s, was keenly felt by the millions who loved him. When he returned to concertizing in 1950, at first it was only to honor Bach, who had died two hundred years before. Violinist Alexander Schneider (of the Budapest Quartet) was integral in coaxing Casals out of his silence and in planning what became known as the Prades Bach Festival.

The Schumann is a revelation. it crackles with rhythm and sparkles with Casals zest for life. I've rarely heard a more beautiful recording. It is not the straight laced type of affair that often comes out on CD these days. And its as far from Gardiner's Schumann as any I know.

A charismatic presence, [Casals] embraces each work with the passion of a devoted horticulturist tending his most precious flowers … I can't think of any other interpreters who so successfully underline the sheer inventiveness of Beethoven's writing.

Pablo Casals showed the world that Bach's solo cello suites were more than mere teaching exercises. Modern ears weaned on historically informed versions might flinch at Casals' tempo fluctuations and distensions of line. Yet his imposing personality, intense concentration, and penetrating musicianship transcend time. Seth Winner's revelatory transfers restore the warm overtones to Casals' cello missing from EMI's harsher remasterings.

This debut album opens with cellist Taeguk Mun - winner of the 2014 Pablo Casals International Cello Competition and the 2016 János Starker Foundation Award - playing Bach's Suite for Solo Cello No 1. He is then joined by the pianist Chi Ho Han, another multi-award-winning musician from South Korea, for Beethoven's Sonata for Cello and Piano in A Major and short pieces by Schumann, Schubert, Rubinstein and Pablo Casals.

This disc offers something quite hard to get these days - Beethoven and Schubert played for their own sake under a conductor who can and does wield from the rostrum every bit of the immense authority of the best years of his cello-playing when even the intervals between the notes seemed to have been imaginatively recreated, and the phrasing presented with nothing less than perfect sensitivity and dignity, and without any desire to make points or impress by virtuoso polish. Of course his approach is of his time. But the Marlboro audience was very lucky, and so is anyone who now listens to this with an open mind. This is a great musician conducting folk who in the act of performance he treats as equals.