♪ music playing ♪
- For people that don't know,
your parents are Catalan.
- Yeah.
- Casals, from Catalonia.
Your father and Casals were very close.
- Yeah, they met on the exile.
They were both Spanish exiles in France.
- They were in the Resistance de Franco
in the Spanish Civil War, right?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So they had to leave Spain.
- Yes.
- And they both went to France
where many, many Spanish refugees went.
And they became very good friends,
and when the Second World War ended,
my father helped Casals
to organize plenty of concerts
to get money for the children
who had lost their parents in the war.
And before that,
during the Second World War,
they both were living South of France,
and my father had some Jewish friends
that was hiding in his house.
And he was caught by the Gestapo.
And he was brought to the prison of Perpignan,
and he was there, waiting to be...
killed by the Germans.
Every night, he could hear--
- How old were you at this point?
- No, I was not born.
- Ah, you were not born.
- No, that was--
- So obviously, he lived. [LAUGHTER]
- But Casals saved him
because he became very ill in the prison.
He had peritonitis.
And Casals,
who the Germans respected
because they knew who he was, anyway.
Casals convinced the Germans
that he was so sick that he was going to die,
and so let him die at home.
And he could have died.
But then he could take him out of the prison,
and he recovered from that illness.
So I am here, thanks to Casals.
And Casals accepted to be my godfather
when I was born in Andorra.
So that was a big...
- So Pablo Casals was your godfather?
- Yes.
- And so, were there stars in the sky
that made you a cellist?
Or how does that happen?
- Some people said that--
And I have a twin brother who plays violin.
And some people in Andorra,
where I was born,
said that same day when we were born,
my twin brother and me,
my father met a friend in the street
and said, "Oh, I have had two twins,
and I would like them to be musicians,"
because his admiration for Casals was so strong.
But of course,
I think he was lucky
because we had some talent,
otherwise...
- Well, yeah, this is amazing.
- Not enough with the father wanting us to be--
to have two sons musicians.
But anyway, it's a special anecdote.
- Did you feel that pressure
when you became a young cellist,
and started to have some success,
that you were somehow in the lineage
or tradition?
- No, I mean, no, no, no.
I think it was something
that bring me up,
more than feeling pressure.
I mean, I was modest.
I didn't think I could never become so very close to Casals.
And I'm still very far from him.
So my ambition was always to,
when I had some teacher,
to get close to the teacher,
to the teacher, and to the teacher.
And then things were going well.
But I never felt pressure
about being Casals...
- And I know you studied with his brother.
- Yeah, violinist.
- Did you have personal contact with Casals?
- I met him three, four times.
I played for him once when I was 13
because my father wanted to know
if we were talented enough,
my brother and me,
to go on with the music studies.
And so we went to play for Casals at Prades.
And it seems Casals said we could go on
because... [LAUGHTER]
I remember I was so nervous,
I had to start playing.
I didn't remember what I had to play, I was...
But then he was very nice with us.
It was a good experience.
It was not a lesson,
he was already quite old.
But I could say that my relationship
with Casals' world is through his brother.
His brother was there, also, listening at that time.
And just couple of years later,
I had to prepare a small competition in--
No, I had to perform Boccherini Concerto
with a conservator orchestra.
And then my father asked [inaudible] Casals
if he would listen to me.
And that was the beginning
of a 25-years relationship.
Until he passed away,
I kept playing for him all the time.
- So, he was the brother of Pablo Casals,
but was he also a wonderful musician?
- Yeah.
He was violinist, conductor, and composer.
He has a wonderful solo Cello Suite.
And he has a very beautiful Cello Concerto,
very romantic,
kind of Catalan [INDISCERNIBLE]
which I performed in Barcelona.
And he was a wonderful pedagog,
very strict.
Every lesson started with a scale
and [INDISCERNIBLE] .
And very strict on intonation
and on phrasing,
but already starting from the scales.
I always had to play musical scale,
with no bow change,
no string cross.
You don't have to hear the bow...
to get the instrument as transparent as possible
to get your voice.
- Repeat that again for all the young cellists
that are listening.
[LAUGHTER]
- No, I think we have to prepare our technique,
connect it to the music.
- Yeah.
- It doesn't mean you have to play like...
No, you have to connect the notes
because music starts when one note connects to the next one.
So the scale is...
This connection is needed.
And with [inaudible] Casals,
it was always that way.
I was lucky.