Many incredible musicians considered it an honor to work with Pablo Casals, even
if it meant momentarily putting their solo careers aside and sitting in an
orchestra like a member of the rank and file, relatively speaking. Was it
because Casals was such a great conductor, or, in terms of technique, such a
master of his instrument? No, and Casals was a musician, of course, but he also
was a humanist, and his humanism suffused everything that he did, including
music-making. The fate of mankind was uppermost in his mind at all times, and he
even silenced his cello for a time to protest the failure of the "civilized"
world to respond to human rights abuses in his Spanish homeland. Fortunately for
us, in time he was convinced to play again, and the Casals Festivals were a
large part of that story. Violinist Alexander Schneider (of the Budapest
Quartet) induced him to take the central role in a 1950 Bach Festival in the
Catalan village of Prades, in honor of the two-hundredth anniversary of the
composer's death. This festival was succeeded by the 1951 Casals Festival in
Perpignan - the material preserved here - and there was a Casals Festival in
Puerto Rico too. As conductor, Casals compensated for his lack of "stick technique" with his demand for exhaustive rehearsals. Casals didn't lead the orchestral musicians as much as he taught them. He educated them about the music and about the nuances that made it come alive - articulation, phrasing, and the expressive manipulation of tone, to name three. At least at Perpignan, his tempos tended to be on the slow side. The tempos themselves didn't make the musicianship profound, although they certainly helped.
Arthur Rubinstein has recorded Mozart’s Piano Concerto KV 488 three times. The material preserved in this record comes from the second one, and it was recorded in Saint Louis with the conduction of the Russian-American musician Vladimir Golschmann. It stands, perhaps, as the most representative performance, among the three he did, as it shows both his technical brilliantness as a soloist, here at his height, and his sense of phrasing and cantability, so masterly conveying the sophisticate operatic flavour that suffused Mozart’s concertante style.
Isaac Stern was born in Kreminiecz, Russia, and is regarded as one of the leading violinists of the 20th century. He arrived in San Francisco in 1921 with his parents who were fleeing the Russian Revolution. He was educated and raised on the West Coast and began playing the violin early on performing his first recital by the age of 13. In 1936, Stern played for the San Francisco Symphony in a nationally broadcast concert of Brahms. This was to be the beginning of a career that has lasted over 50 years. Stern has appeared all over the world and with most of the major world orchestras. He is a musician who has never neglected the contemporary scene recording new works by Bernstein, Penderecki, Rochberg, Schuman and Maxwell Davies. He also plays an important and guiding role for young starting musicians as he devotes himself to the advancement and recognition of the arts nationally and internationally.
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