The Orquestra Pau Casals (Spanish: Orquesta Pau Casals) was established by Pablo Casals (sometimes known as Pau Casals) in the early 1920s in Barcelona, with the debut performance taking place October 13, 1920. There had been other orchestras in Barcelona, but none that played with any enduring success. [1] The orchestra was managed by a group of Casals' friends including Felip Capdevila and Casals' second wife Francesca. [2]
Casals hired musicians full-time and invested his savings to balance the accounts. He spent a great deal of effort in working with the orchestra and raising the level of technical accomplishment, so much so that he suffered a "nervous breakdown" at one point and had to rest for several months. However, after nine years of training, the Orquestra Pau Casals became recognized as one of the finer orchestras in Europe, attracting high quality soloists and guest conductors. Casals conducted the orchestra himself, and promoted it by playing with it exclusively as a soloist in Barcelona and refusing to play at other venues in the area. [3]
Casals organized his orchestral performances to appeal to the working-class people of Catalonia, and workmen and their families often attended, listening to Mozart, Beethoven and other classical repertoire. [4] Dedicated to the ideal that everyone should appreciate and support music, Casals also founded the Associacio Obrera de Concerts (Working Men's Concert Association) in Barcelona with annual dues of six pesetas which served as a subscription to his concert series. [5] [6]
The orchestra recorded Beethoven's First and Fourth Symphonies in November 1929. [7] Other recordings are also available. [8]
Isaac Stern was an American violinist.
An orchestra is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments:
Pau Casals i Defilló, known in English as Pablo Casals, 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.
Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is regarded as one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. He was a major influence for many later conductors, and his name is often mentioned when discussing their interpretative styles.
Palau de la Música Catalana is a concert hall in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Designed in the Catalan modernista style by the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, it was built between 1905 and 1908 for Orfeó Català, a choral society founded in 1891 that was a leading force in the Catalan cultural movement that came to be known as the Renaixença. It was inaugurated on 9 February 1908.
Paul Tortelier was a French cellist and composer. After an outstanding student career at the Conservatoire de Paris he played in orchestras in France and the US before the Second World War. After the war he became a well-known soloist, playing in countries round the globe. He taught at conservatoires in France, Germany and China, and gave televised masterclasses in England. He was particularly associated with the solo part in Richard Strauss's Don Quixote, cello concertos by Elgar and others, and Bach's Cello Suites.
The Philharmonia Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It was founded in 1945 by Walter Legge, a classical music record producer for EMI. Among the conductors who worked with the orchestra in its early years were Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Arturo Toscanini; of the Philharmonia's younger conductors, the most important to its development was Herbert von Karajan who, though never formally chief conductor, was closely associated with the orchestra in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Philharmonia became widely regarded as the finest of London's five symphony orchestras in its first two decades.
Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-American violinist. He has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that have included a state dinner for Elizabeth II at the White House in 2007, and at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama. He has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic. In 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Perlman has won 16 Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and four Emmy Awards.
Eugene George Istomin was an American pianist. He was a winner of the Leventritt Award and recorded extensively as a soloist and in a piano trio in which he collaborated with Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose.
Rudolf Serkin was a Bohemian-born Austrian-American pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Beethoven interpreters of the 20th century.
Leonidas Kavakos is a Greek violinist and conductor. He has won several international violin competition prizes, including the Sibelius, Paganini, Naumburg, and Indianapolis competitions. He is an Onassis Foundation scholar. He has also recorded for record labels such as Sony/BMG and BIS. As a conductor, he was an artistic director of the Camerata Salzburg and has been a guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and National Orchestra of Catalonia is a symphony orchestra based in Barcelona, Spain. Since April 1999, the Orchestra has had its headquarters at L'Auditori. Prior to that, from its foundation to 1998, the orchestra was resident at the Palau de la Música Catalana.
Juan Manén was a Spanish violinist and composer, born in Barcelona.
Francisco Casanovas Tallardá was a Spanish conductor, composer, pedagogue, clarinetist, saxophonist and flautist.
Stephanie Ann Chase is an American classical violinist.
Georgii Cherkin is Bulgarian pianist and composer. He has played with some of the most respected conductors and musicians in the world. Not only is he renowned for his performances but also for his masterful orchestrations of many popular piano masterpieces, which have captivated audiences. He introduced the first-ever rendition of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" in an arrangement for piano and orchestra, gaining worldwide recognition.
Enric Casals i Defilló, brother of Pablo Casals, was a Spanish violinist, composer and conductor.
Leonora Milà Romeu is a Catalan pianist and composer.
Pablo Ferrández is a Spanish cellist. He has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the Spanish National Orchestra, the RTVE Symphony Orchestra, the Kremerata Baltica or the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Pablo has been awarded prizes in numerous competitions: Second Prize at the International Paulo Cello Competition, Edmond de Rothschild Group Award at the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad Festival, Prix Nicolas Firmenich at the Verbier Festival, Leyda Ungerer Music Prize at the Kronberg Cello Festival and First Prize at the Liezen International Competition.
The Beethoven concert of 22 December 1808 was a benefit concert held for Ludwig van Beethoven at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna that featured the public premieres of Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Choral Fantasy. This concert, advertised as an Akademie, was held in a very cold hall and lasted about four hours. Its featured performers were an orchestra, chorus, vocal soloists, and Beethoven as the conductor and piano soloist. Beethoven biographer Barry Cooper calls the concert's content the "most remarkable" of Beethoven's career.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
