Pleasure in Prades

In the dusty little French Pyrenees town of Prades (pop. 4,397), the atmosphere was as vibrant as a violin string. Musicians and music-loving tourists from all over Western Europe and the U.S. had clustered there for the most notable of the summer's festivals in honor of Johann Sebastian Bach, who died 200 years ago next month. Prades' festival was centered in one of Bach's most renowned interpreters, 73-year-old Cellist Pablo Casals, who had come out of self-imposed retirement there (TIME, Jan. 30) for the occasion.

A month ago, when some of the world's top virtuosos first gathered in Prades for rehearsals, stocky little Pablo Casals quickly dismissed the idea that he himself deserved any special homage. "We are here because of Bach," he said. "We are also here to give pleasure and we will give pleasure to each other. I thank you. I love you."

But before many rehearsals had passed, Casals had won new homage for himself as well as Bach--from even the younger musicians who had never heard him except on records, and who had come to Prades to learn from him but not necessarily to be overawed.

Perhaps Together. Veteran Violinist Alexander Schneider, who arranged the festival (and the recording of it by Columbia), could not explain exactly how Casals had done it--"A million words are of no use." Young Pianist Eugene Istomin was more articulate. His admiration did not stem from "the musical facts I may learn from Casals. It is the reinforcement of an attitude that is so inspiring. He stands for everything that is noble and sublime in music, and you feel unafraid to express it yourself after you have met this man."

The young musicians found that, as a conductor, aging Pablo Casals had no particular "technique of discipline." Said one: "He cannot enliven or discipline a bored technician. He is a conductor for real musicians. You give as much as you get."

The Casals technique often made rehearsals a cooperative venture. Once he told them, "Now we shall improvise. All my life I am working for the right expression for this piece. It is 60 years now and I have not found it. Perhaps we can find it together." His favorite admonition was "Naturally--play naturally." When he was pleased he cried, "Eggzactly--eggzactly." Once when a musician struck a wrong note and others looked pained, Casals remarked cheerfully: "In Bach's time everybody played out of tune. The spirit is more important than wrong notes."

Without Effort. One night last week, in Prades' Cathedral of St. Pierre, the Bishop of Perpignan welcomed the artists and the "musically select audience, all united here in the same spirit." Then as bald, spectacled Cellist Casals took his place in the transept, the entire audience rose with the orchestra in a quiet tribute.

The opening concert was a good sampling of what was to come in the festival's three weeks. Sitting in hushed and churchly silence, the audience heard two Brandenburg concertos and the D-Minor Piano Concerto, with French Pianist Yvonne Lefebure as an outstanding soloist. In the Brandenburg No. 2, a soprano saxophone played one of the solo parts; the trumpeter brought from Paris could not keep up with Casals' driving tempo.

But it was Casals himself who provided the concert's biggest thrill. When he began the first of Bach's six sonatas for unaccompanied cello, his face was serious and sober. As always, he played with his eyes closed, without effort. As the music welled from his cello, two U.S. musicians found the combination of Bach and Casals too much for them, wept openly. Said brilliant young Violinist Isaac Stern, later: "I never cried at a concert before in my life."

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