Marlboro Festival Orchestra, Pablo Casals - J.S. Bach: The Brandenburg Concertos Vol.1 & 2 (1990)

Casals was one of the very few conductors, and certainly the first, to record the complete Brandenburgs twice – in 1950 with his Prades Festival Orchestra (Columbia LPs) and in 1964-6 with the Marlboro Festival Orchestra (Sony CDs). Incidentally, don't be fooled by their names into assuming that these were amateur ensembles – both were extraordinary groups of top-flight professionals who would come together to study and play over the summer – the cello section of the Marlboro Festival Orchestra included Mischa Schneider (of the Budapest Quartet), Hermann Busch (Busch Quartet) and David Soyer (Guarneri Quartet). As recalled by Bernard Meillat, while Casals appreciated research into Baroque playing, he viewed Bach as timeless and universal, and insisted that an interpreter's intuition was far more important than strict observance of esthetic tradition. Thus, he shunned old instruments and used a piano rather than the harpsichord heard on every other stereo Brandenburg simply because he found the resources of the piano to be far more expressive. He was also practical, substituting a soprano saxophone in the 1950 Second, not for any artistic reason but simply because the specified trumpet couldn't keep up with his breakneck pace, the fastest on record. While his tempos can be extreme, Casals' precise phrasing and subtle inflection constantly enliven his work, which emerges as warm, rich and intensely human – not surprisingly, the very qualities that distinguished his celebrated performances as the most influential of all cellists. -- Peter Gutmann