MUSIC 1950: Pablo Casals Plays Bach in the French Pyrenees

"A Reunion of Hearts"

In Prades' Church of St. Pierre in the French Pyrenees, every pew, aisle and choir stall was crammed with hushed listeners. As the last tones of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cantata for Soprano and Bass, No. 32 floated away, there was silence. Then, in an unexpected gesture, the tall, white-haired Bishop of Perpignan arose, raised his hands and gave the first clap, signaling an end to the church ban on applause. As bald little Pablo Casals bowed from the podium, the 2,000 listeners clapped so thunderously that a piece of plaster shook loose from the high roof, clattered into the church.

Last week Prades' great three-week Bach festival was over. But the feeling of it still lingered on. It had been "a reunion of hearts," 73-year-old Pablo Casals told a farewell gathering of his friends. The musicians who had come to play with and listen to Bach's most famed modern interpreter enthusiastically agreed.

Casals' simple but masterfully eloquent performance of the six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello had moved the most undazzled of them to tears. When he put down his cellist's bow and took up the baton, he had called forth a fresh new spirit from the weariest fingers.

Those who were going home would take with them unforgettable memories of Prades and the little man who, to honor Bach, had broken his vow not to play in public again until Franco's government had been ousted from his native Spain.