Cellist in Exile: A Portrait of Pablo Casals

By Bernard Taper

The cellist in exile is, of course, Pablo Casals, one of the noble figures of the century, who is aptly described here by Bernard Taper as that rarity—an artist with a sense of commitment to humanity.”

The book is informal, deeply personal, and permeated with Mr. Taper’s own wonder and affection for his subject. Sensitive, perceptive, and lucid, Cellist in Exile captures the flavor of a unique personality. The book reveals Casals as he is today—still playing the cello inimitably at the age of eighty-five, still stubbornly asserting the moral tenets which have shaped his life—and shows him in the setting of Puerto Rico, which has been his home for the past few years and is his present place of exile. At the same time the book, without being a formal biography, succeeds in re-creating for the reader a vivid sense of Casals’ long, intense, rich, and purposeful life.

In preparing this work, Mr. Taper enjoyed a number of conversations with Casals at his home, talks about a whole gamut of subjects—music, freedom, nature, peace, and the Catalonian homeland that Casals still yearns for after more than two decades in exile.

As expanded from the widely acclaimed Profile in The New Yorker, Mr. Taper’s book shows Casals in many moods and many different activities—rehearsing, playing the cello, early morning walks along the beach, and at home with his attractive young wife. He is seen in playful imitation of a novice performer’s nervousness when attempting a quavering line Schubert, a scene then heightened by Casals’ confession of the acute nervousness he has suffered before every one of the performances in his own triumphant career. Mr. Taper conveys the cellist’s warmth and simplicity when working with other famed musicians and the kind of communion in music shared with the members of his Casals’ Festival Orchestra.

Beautifully illustrated throughout with numerous photographs, some of which had never before been published.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Release date: Dec 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789126273

Bernard Taper

Bernard B. Taper (1918-2016) was an American journalist and author. Born in Scotland on January 28, 1918 and raised in London, England, Taper came to the U.S. alone on a freighter at the age of 11. He was a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army during WWII and, immediately after it ended, became one of the “monuments men” charged with the duty of recovering paintings and sculptures looted by the Nazis. He earned a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree in creative writing from Stanford. He used many of those skills during his reporting career at The Chronicle from 1950 to 1955. In 1956, Taper joined the staff of The New Yorker, where he remained for three decades and, with his friend and former Chronicle reporter Kevin Wallace, wrote countless Talk of the Town stories. Taper profiled 14-year-old chess prodigy Bobby Fischer; the first prime minister of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah; cellist Pablo Casals; and Broadway producer Jerome Robbins. In 1963, he expanded a series of his profiles of choreographer George Balanchine into a best-selling biography, considered the definitive account of the great Russian man of dance. In 1970, he joined the faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, where he was best known for teaching a class on the writing of profiles and short biographies. Taper helped found the California Shakespeare Theater in 1973. He died in Berkeley, California on October 17, 2016, aged 98.

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Text originally published in 1962 under the same title.

© Muriwai Books 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

CELLIST IN EXILE

BY

BERNARD TAPER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

i 68

ii 72

iii 79

iv 87

v 91

vi 93

vii 97

viii 101

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 103

DEDICATION

To Mother

Pablo Casals

i

EARLY OF A MORNING on a beach near San Juan in Puerto Rico one may sometimes see a rather curious little procession—two dogs, an attractive young brunette, and a small, elderly bald man of stout, invincible build, who carries a black umbrella to shade his eyes from the rays of the tropical sun. They go along the water’s edge. The dogs frisk about in the tawny sand. The young woman walks gravely and somewhat solicitously by the side of her companion, who steps along with a quick but rather stiff little stride, and every now and then stops to stretch out his arms and exclaim with delight as he is touched, as if for the first time, by some aspect of nature.

The man is Pablo Casals, taking his ritual morning walk beside the sea he loves, four thousand miles from his native land. In Puerto Rico, at his advanced age, this small powerful figure who is that rarity—an artist with a sense of commitment to humanity—continues, in his own way, to be a source of joy to the world, and a force that sustains and rejuvenates the spirit. At the age of eighty-five he is still playing the cello inimitably. The cello is a hard instrument. Few violinists, even, have been able to go on playing acceptably beyond the age of seventy, and the cello requires not only all the delicacy of control and perfection of ear that a violin does but greater muscular strength. How much longer Casals can continue to play no one dares say at this point. Any performance could well be his last appearance. But on the other hand, Casals being what he is, he might go on to a hundred.

As a widespread musical influence, he is probably at his peak today. The violinist, Isaac Stern, one of the younger generation of performers who have been deeply affected by him, has said, He has enabled us to realize that a musician can play in a way that is honest, beautiful, masculine, gentle, fierce and tender—all these together, and all with unequivocal respect for the music being played, and faith in it.