The Diada Pau Casals goes one step further and celebrates this year not only the soloist role of the famous cellist and conductor but also his ability in the always complex trio format which, as stated by the artistic director of this event, Bernard Meillat, “ It is one of the most difficult things, because it is not a dialogue like the sonatas nor a democracy like the quartets, but a debate, a topic of conversation that often resolves into a two against one.”
Three great performers such as the violinist Renaud Capuçon, the cellist Daniel Müller-Schott and the pianist Francesco Piemontesi will meet exceptionally to celebrate this new edition of the Diada on June 12 at the Palau de la Música Catalana. It will be with some of the many trios that Casals performed throughout his career, especially with the pianist Alfred Cortot and the violinist Jacques Thibaud, but also in his beginnings with Enric Granados on the piano and later with violinists such as Joseph Szigeti, Isaac Stern or Yehudi Menuhin, who said that he had never met anyone to play with like Casals.
The trio’s history is full of failures. One of the most popular was the one starring the violinist Jascha Heifetz, the pianist Arthur Rubinstein and the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. These three musicians reunited to play at Carnegie Hall in 1949, but personal and artistic tensions immediately led to their breakup. Disagreements also led to the breakup between Nathan Milstein, Vladimir Horowitz and Gregor Piatigorsky and they did not continue collaborating as a trio. “The egos were too strong,” says Meillat.
“It is true that Martha Argerich, Mischa Maisky and Gidon Kremer sometimes play together. In reality, only a couple, and they will do it again now in Japan,” adds the Pau Casals specialist. “This repertoire requires excellent people, for example, if we want a performance of Schubert or Beethoven trios, we need great soloists.”
In any case, it is the spirit of Casals that now unites Müller-Schott, Piemontesi and Capuçon. “His attitude is very close to that of Casals, who is also a reference figure for all of them. We are talking about Capuçon who inherited Stern’s violin and worked with him in his last years. Renaud is a great music lover and loves being able to dedicate two or three days to rehearsing in Barcelona. Daniel Müller-Schott, who has never played with him, began his career very young under the wing of Rostropovich and with Anne Sophie Mutter, and won the Tchaikovsky Prize at the age of 16. “His is a first-rate career.”
The cellist was the first one the Fundació Pau Casals contacted to propose this adventure. He himself chose the Italian pianist, with whom he has a great friendship. The three will play, maintaining the link with Pau Casals, an important program in the career of the Catalan musician: the Trio with Haydn’s Hungarian ending that Casals himself had recorded with Thibaud and Cortot. Also Ravel’s Trio that Casals played for the composer and First by Brahms, whose adagio contains one of the most beautiful phrases ever written for the cello. “A central work in the last years of Casals’ career: between 1950 and 1966 he performed it five times,” says Meillat.
Müller-Schott, Piemontesi and Capuçon will maintain the now classic meeting with the music-loving community and young music students in the rehearsal room of the Orfeó Català.
