The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece
By Eric Siblin

“The stroke of his bow was like heavy silk… his vibrato was strong and rapid… What Casals gave was the culmination of a life devoted to technique, enriched by recent years of sad seclusion, and freed once more for pleasure.”
– The New Yorker (Concert Review)

The Cello Suites weaves together three dramatic narratives: Bach’s composition of the suites and the manuscript’s disappearance in the eighteenth century; Pablo Casals’s discovery and popularization of the music in Spain in the late-nineteenth century; and author Eric Siblin’s obsession with the suites in the present day.

This concert features PCM faculty performing Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3, and Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor by Felix Mendelssohn, who was instrumental in reviving public interest in the works of Bach. Also on the program is the Catalan folk song made famous by Pablo Casals: Song of the Birds.

Program
Bach: Cello Suite No. 3
Andrew Cook, cello

Mendelssohn: Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor
Elizabeth Hedman, violin
Rowena Hammill, cello
Dr. Kathryn Eames, piano

Catalan Folk Song: Song of the Birds
Andrew Cook, cello

Date, performers, venue, and repertoire subject to change.

The Cello Suites may be ordered through Vroman’s Bookstore.