Word: bach
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
...Baton. Last week Prades' great three-week Bach festival (TIME, June 12) 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...
...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. With perfectionist Casals sitting before him in the audience, scholarly Pianist Rudolf Serkin had played through Bach's Goldberg Variations with a power and precision that transfigured Casals' round face...
...before many rehearsals had passed, Casals had won new homage for himself as well as Bach-from even the younger musicians who had never heard him except on records, and who had come to Prades to learn from him but not necessarily to be overawed...
...piece. It is 60 years now and I have not found it. Perhaps we can find it together." His favorite admonition was "Naturally-play naturally." When he was pleased he cried, "Eggzactly-eggzactly." Once when a musician struck a wrong note and others looked pained, Casals remarked cheerfully: "In Bach's time everybody played out of tune. The spirit is more important than wrong notes...