Piano
SKU:
BO.BC0006
Composed by
Pau Casals. Published by
Editorial de Musica
Boileau (BO.BC0006).
Despite a
strong vocation for the
cello, which he studied
and began to play with a
distinctive character,
Pau Casals, like most
ambitious, creative
musicians, wrote at the
piano and for the piano,
as it is the ultimate
teaching instrument,
summarising the full
vision of the creative
process. Any creative
musician habitually
worked at the piano,
whether for this
instrument alone or for
piano accompanied by
other solo instruments.
To date, it has not been
possible to document
whether Casals had
systematic training on
this instrument, although
at that time it was more
common than it is today
because, considering its
qualities of timbre and
combination, it was
particularly attractive
for creating test pieces
and different kinds of
compositions.
Th
e piano works contained
in this second volume
include part of the salon
repertoire, a
continuation of the first
volume, and four sardanas
for piano of diverse
origin: some are
reductions of more
complex forms and others
sketches for instrumental
groups. In the first
group, some works
intended for children are
published, a
demonstration of the
tenderness the
‘cellist felt for
the children of his
closest friends. In the
second case, the sardanas
are works from his first
exile in Prada and show
the nostalgia of the
composer, away from his
country against his
will.
In
general, the works are
not especially complex;
their purpose and nature
are diverse. They come in
the context of salon
music, with the
appearance of creative
entertainments
characterised by a
basically tonal,
transparent language with
a widespread tendency to
modulate to nearby keys
more as a momentary
expressive resource than
as a structural
evolutionary procedure.
They show a lack of
systematic work on the
instrument as well as the
commonplaces of piano
composition of their
time. In some of these
works, the piano thread
breaks, the works do not
have the thrust of
finished products; the
occasional appearance of
chords that are difficult
or impossible to finger
leads us to think of
intentions closer to test
pieces than to products
intended for normal
performance. But not all
these piano works are
circumstantial. There is
also a prelude and a
minuet of a certain piano
writing complexity.
