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Pablo Casals is one of the towering figures of the twentieth century. A superb musician, but alsó an outstanding humanitarian, Casals shares a special place among creative artists and intellectuals of our era whose genius transcends artistic or national boundaries— men like Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Mann, André Malraux, Albert Schweitzer.
For almost three-quarters of a century Casals was considered the greatest cellist who ever lived, and for more than half a century was recognized as a brilliant conductor and inspiring teacher. His career, spanning as it did an almost superhuman length of time, encompassed manyparadoxes: the cellist who performed at the White House for the Ken-nedys played for Queen Victoria in a priváté recitál more than sixty years earlier; the man who was intimate with the turn-of-the-cen-tury court of Spain became an inexhaustible fighter for democracy in his homeland. One of the most dedicated musicians of his time, Casals was eventually...
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Fülszöveg
Pablo Casals is one of the towering figures of the twentieth century. A superb musician, but alsó an outstanding humanitarian, Casals shares a special place among creative artists and intellectuals of our era whose genius transcends artistic or national boundaries— men like Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Mann, André Malraux, Albert Schweitzer.
For almost three-quarters of a century Casals was considered the greatest cellist who ever lived, and for more than half a century was recognized as a brilliant conductor and inspiring teacher. His career, spanning as it did an almost superhuman length of time, encompassed manyparadoxes: the cellist who performed at the White House for the Ken-nedys played for Queen Victoria in a priváté recitál more than sixty years earlier; the man who was intimate with the turn-of-the-cen-tury court of Spain became an inexhaustible fighter for democracy in his homeland. One of the most dedicated musicians of his time, Casals was eventually to silence his instru-ment for years as a protest against the Fascist
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government of Francisco Franco. And when he composed or conducted he used his musical genius not simply to make sublime music but, as a self-proclaimed "militant of music," to further the cause of world peace and nu-clear disarmament.
From the small Catalan village where Casals was born in 1876 to the Royal Palace of Madrid, the salons of Paris and London, perilous tours of the American West and South America, Casals' story is of a pro-digious rise from totál obscurity to world-wide fame. In the course of his lifetime, his friends included kings, queens, philosophers, and somé of this century's most renowned composers and musicians—among them Saint-Saéns, Rachmaninoff, Ysaye, Paderew-ski, Fritz Kreisler, Rudolf Serkin, and many others.
The astoundingly long and successful life of Pablo Casals is set forth here in a defin-itive biography. Drawing upon Casals' own recollections-of his impoverished childhood, his musical and political activities, his per-sonal life—and his own extensive research, H. L. Kirk paints a vivid and sensitive por-trait of a magnificently talented and coura-geous humán being.
H. L. Kirk met Pablo Casals in 1960 and six years later began work on his biography. Mr. Kirk has worked as an editor and writer in New York City. He and his wife divide their time between Manhattan and a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse in Vermont.
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