Pablo Casals
Pablo Casals
Pau Casals i Defilló, better known in some countries as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish cellist and conductor from Catalonia. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time. He made many recordings throughout his career, of solo, chamber, and orchestral music, also as conductor, but he is perhaps best remembered for the recordings of the Bach Cello Suites he made from 1936 to...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionCellist
Date of Birth29 December 1876
CityEl Vendrell, Spain
CountrySpain
Let us not forget that the greatest composers where also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.
To be a musician is a great privilege but it is also a very great responsibility. One must think that to be a musician is a gift - a gift from Nature. There is no great merit in us except in loving this gift with respect and devotion and doing everything possible to honor that gift by work and more work. We must work with conviction and humility, searching for beauty, simplicity, and the Truth. And it is for us musicians to do all in our power for a better world. Music must carry the message of beauty, of love and of peace.
Beauty is all about us, but how many are blind! They look at the wonder of this earth and seem to see nothing. People move hectically but give little thought to where they are going. They seek excitement...as if they were lost and desperate.
The truly important things in life - love, beauty, and one's own uniqueness - are constantly being overlooked.
The cello is like a beautiful woman who has not grown older, but younger with time, more slender, more supple, more graceful.
You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.
The situation is hopeless, we must take the next step.
One should be able to say to our children: You are a marvel! You are unique. In all the world, there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed, there has never been another child like you! ... and when you grow up, can you harm another who is, like you, a marvel?
Rock n' roll is poison put to sound.
The only weapons I ever had were my cello and my baton.
I am perhaps the oldest musician in the world. I am an old man but in many senses a very young man. And this is what I want you to be, young, young all your life, and to say things to the world that are true.