Search - Pablo Casals :: Casals: Dvorak, Cello Concerto / Brahms, Double Concerto

Pablo Casals in Barcelona and Prague

Stephen Taylor | Chapel Hill, North Carolina | 12/15/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a re-release of two Pablo Casals recordings done back in the 1920s and 30s. The Brahms Double Concerto was recorded in Barcelona with French violinst Jacques Thibaud and the Pablo Casals Orchestra in May 1929 and engineered by the famous American record producer Fred Gaisberg. Naxos' engineer for this re-release noted that the Gaisberg recording "was not one of the better-engineered recordings of its time," in spite of Gaisberg's generally good productions. Still, I think it sounds pretty decent considering when it was made. There's a strong hiss, but it's only really annoying if you listen to it with headphones, and while Thibaud's playing is often a little grating, Casals makes up the difference. The concerto and the musicians are intense enough to help everything shine through some of the flaws of the recording.The luscious Dvorak cello concerto was recorded in Prague eight years later (April, 1937) with the excellent Czech Philharmonic under the young George Szell. The Naxos engineer points out that this recording was one of the best done before World War II. (While it's still primitive by our standards, it's an improvement on the Brahms recording.) Szell's talented handling of the orchestra complements Casals' rich playing, and although a few of the soft nuances of the music are lost in the recording, all of the musicians do a good job balancing the beautiful contrast between its quietness and rigor.I enjoyed the disc, but if you've never listenened to a historical recording before, here's a word of advice: be patient, they take a while to get used to. (Maybe you have to have a little nostalgia, too, in addition to patience.) If you can get over the rough sound quality, I think you'll find that with repeated listening, some of these recordings are better than a lot of the pompous and inept ones produced today. -- 5 stars."