Pleni Sunt Celli

With a hundred cellos gleaming on it, the stage of New York's Philharmonic Hall looked like the setting for a Busby Berkeley musical. The earlier part of the program included Soprano Beverly Sills, Pianist Rudolf Serkin and Conductor Leopold Stokowski. But "Salud Casals" night did not really get under way until the guest of honor arrived with his all-cello orchestra. The performers had gathered from all over the world. Each cellist financed his own trip and donated his services for the privilege of being led by Pablo Casals in one of his brief compositions, a Catalan Sardana (an infinite number of cellos can play its eight-part harmony).

When Casals finally came on, he was helped up to the podium. He began to conduct sitting down. But the music soon brought him to his feet to urge his fellow musicians forward. Time may have taken its physical toll of Casals the cellist. But as the evening showed, his conducting seems to improve with age. He had strong control, and he got exactly what he wanted from both music and orchestra. When he took up his baton the years vanished.

No Egomania. Perhaps the reason Casals has withstood the wear and tear of time so well is that he has not faded, only mellowed. His new autobiography, Joys and Sorrows (as told to Albert E. Kahn; Simon & Schuster; $7.95), avoids the orgies of nostalgic egomania typical of most aging performers. "On my last birthday I was ninety-three years old," he begins. "That is not young, of course. In fact, it is older than ninety. But age is a relative matter."

By El Maestro's account, his birth in Catalonia on Dec. 29, 1876, was not auspicious. "The umbilical cord twisted around my neck," he writes. "My face was black, and I nearly choked to death." At the age of four, he began studying the piano with his father, the church organist in Vendrell. At twelve, he was already a virtuoso cello player and was on his way to revolutionizing cello technique. "There was something very awkward and unnatural in playing with a stiff arm and with one's elbows close to one's sides," he explains. "We had to hold a book under the armpit of our bowing arm while we were learning." Casals threw away the book, devised a method that freed the arms and improved left-hand fingering. He opened up the hand position, too, and found he could play four notes at once instead of three. The results made Casals famous and transformed the cello into a celebrated instrument.

Born with Ability. Yet Casals admits that he has reservations about the cello. He prefers conducting, but avoids any claim of greatness in either metier. From a lesser master, such self-deprecation might seem disingenuous, but Casals clearly means it. "I was born with an ability, with music in me," he explains. "No special credit was due me."

With the quirky vanity of genius, he does boast about his skill at tennis, a game he loved. Sir Edward Speyer, the British financier and patron of music, recalls Casals' arriving at his estate one day in the early 1900s and announcing, "First we'll play six sets of tennis and then the two Brahms sextets."

The famous Casals sense of injustice asserted itself even when he was a child. Financed by the royal family of Spain, young Casals auditioned for the Conservatory of Music in Brussels, and after being rudely taunted by the cello professor for claiming an astoundingly broad repertory, stunned both professor and students with his playing. When the professor then eagerly asked Casals to join the class, Casals snapped: "You were rude to me, sir. You ridiculed me in front of your pupils. I do not want to remain here one second longer." He left for Paris, forfeiting the royal family's support by doing so.

Casals had a blazing temper. He relates that when his manager cheated him during a tour of America in 1904, he seized the man, hurled him into the revolving doors of a hotel, and spun him around until the door broke and the culprit was catapulted into the street. "Of course I had to pay for the doors," writes Casals, "but I really didn't mind."

Casals played for two American Presidents (Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, John F. Kennedy in 1961) and for British monarchs starting with Queen Victoria in 1899. He knew Debussy, Rimsky-Korsakov and Conductor Hans Richter, who had been a friend of Wagner. His book is stuffed with tales of great music makers at their most unbuckled moments. He tells how his friend Violinist Pablo Sarasate used to complain of insomnia because, he claimed, his room was full of turtles. Tiring of this fiction, Sarasate's friends filled the great virtuoso's quarters with real turtles. Sarasate contemplated the creatures and, unabashed, sighed, "You see how it is . . ."

The Idealist. Rarely is Casals personally revealing. He does offer praise for Martita, his youthful present wife, married in 1957. "She is the marvel of my world, and each day I find some new wonder in her." It is only in the second half of Joys and Sorrows that the reader begins to glimpse Casals the idealist, who used his artistic prestige to protest political injustices. Early in life he rejected socialism: "Full of illusions about changing society and man," he decided. "How is man to be changed when he is full of selfishness and cynicism, when aggression is part of his nature?" The book discusses his 30 years of voluntary exile, embarked upon in outrage at Franco's rule in Spain, and reflects Casals' anger at American support of that regime. His sense of political morality sizzles from the pages in his denunciations of the Spanish government. When asked why he does not give up his Spanish passport, Casals retorts: "Why should I give it up? Let Franco give up his. And then I shall return."

Casals, after all, is that most elusive of subjects, a profoundly simple man who possesses genius and spirit. It is not surprising that he does not know (or show) himself as fully as his admirers and the world might wish. Meanwhile, as both book and "Salud Casals" attest, he is happily still present, still performing.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.